Don't write off motorists, says designer

Planners keen on using public transport to boost Auckland's regional growth strategy are being warned by an American urban-design leader against trampling over motorists.

"I consider it unethical to deliberately hurt people's transport options just to sell public transport," San Diego-based consultant Alan Hoffman told guests at an Auckland Regional Council seminar on what overseas planners call transit-oriented design.

"Because what you end up doing is impoverishing people's lives.

"The goal should be to improve all forms of transport, but to balance them in terms of what the costs are of each, and what each can achieve."

His caution followed a question from the audience about whether public transport could or should be used to "slow down motor cars".

Transit-oriented design involves improving and using public transport to shape and contain urban growth by supporting higher-density housing in designated zones - as Auckland, among many cities around the world, is trying to do.

Mr Hoffman was reluctant in an interview with the Herald to judge the merits of Auckland's lengthening bus lanes, along which road space is taken from general rush-hour traffic, saying it all depended on how many people these ended up moving.

But he cited the establishment of a 17km landscaped pedestrian-only boulevard through Colombia's teeming capital of Bogota, known as the city's Environmental Access, as an effective use of public space previously monopolised by motor traffic.

"It has calmed the city and resulted in a decline in violent crime," he said.

Mr Hoffman, whose seminar was a precursor to an all-day course at Auckland Town Hall today on transit-oriented design, was enthusiastic about the use of park-and-ride stations to support the thriving Northern Express bus service between Albany and Britomart.

"If you use your park-and-rides strategically to attract new riders, over a period of time you can shift many of them on to services originating closer to their homes," he said, after travelling on the express in the morning traffic peak.

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority says the service is already removing 400 cars from the motorway system in each morning and afternoon traffic peak, well ahead of the completion in 18 months of a $290 million dedicated two-lane busway.

That is being modelled on Brisbane's 16km South-East Busway, which was completed in 2001 and is estimated to move 15,000 passengers an hour at its busiest point.

Mr Hoffman, who has reviewed the transit-oriented development potential of land around two more proposed busway corridors in Brisbane, said the typical new patron might be someone running late for a meeting who decides to take a chance on an express bus.

"They park at the station, board the bus, arrive downtown before their meeting, and say: 'Hey, this works, I can use this'."

That left developers "smelling blood" and scrambling to build houses and shops around transport corridors, as reflected in an estimated 15 per cent rise in land values near the Brisbane busway.

He complimented the "quality environment" of mid-density residential and commercial developments around Viaduct Harbour, although he believed it could have been made even better by providing the residents with better public transport links.

Such schemes could give developers more confidence to spread into the suburbs, to offer people an alternative to the otherwise stark choice between homes on "quarter-acre" sections and poorly constructed high-rise apartment blocks.

That included catering for people's changing housing needs as they moved through life, including those whose children had grown up and left home.