Brian Rudman: Trains cloak old lust for tarmac

COMMENT

Those mayors of ours are starting to make my brain hurt. Manukau's Sir Barry Curtis and Auckland City's John Banks surprised us all on Wednesday by coming out as born-again devotees of public transport.

All dewy-eyed, they spoke of their vision of an electrified commuter train service zapping down the main trunk line from the southeast to downtown Britomart Station at five-minute intervals, full of happy, contended former motorists.

But in the same breath, they continued to extol the virtues of their old - and dare I suggest only - true love, the eastern highway.

Oh how they lust after that highway, even though they admit they can't afford her.

They are forever whipping out the wallets to flash the latest photos. Look how beautiful her curves are, how environmentally sensitive she is.

So smitten are the two suitors, they have this crazy idea that the rest of us will be only too happy to pay a special highway toll every time we nose our car out of its garage, just to ensure their love is consummated.

Of course we will, John. Sure thing, Barry.

The love talk gets very confusing around the whole issue of tolling.

As born-again public transport advocates, they've borrowed some of the lingo as well. To them, tolling has become congestion pricing.

But there's a not-so-subtle difference. Tolling is a straightforward user-pays device to extract cash for a road or bridge.

Congestion pricing is a social engineering tool to ration road use to those who can afford it, forcing other motorists onto public transport.

Sir Barry and Mr Banks are having a bob each way. Their charge will be both a toll to raise cash for the highway and a rod to beat poor or moneywise motorists out of their cars and onto buses and trains.

But does this all compute? If the mayors manage to lay on the super five-minute rail service they're talking about, and manage to drive, by carrot and stick, people out of their cars, will there be enough motorists left to pay for the new highway.

More important still, with many motorists now using public transport, will the new highway then even be necessary?

Certainly, the earlier Opus report indicated that even a modest toll of $2 would reduce the flow along the new highway from 120,000 vehicles a day to fewer than 20,000.

Figures like that forced the mayors to resort to the idea of ringing the isthmus with tolling points so that no one could escape the impost.

The mayors seem to have missed the whole point about congestion pricing. The concept is born out of the acceptance that building more roads is not the answer to anything.

Congestion tolls are not levied to pay for new roads; they are collected to finance improvements to public transit.

Imagine if that were to happen in Auckland. The mayors are now optimistically suggesting their just-announced shrunken version of the highway will cost $2.5 billion. Yet for $1.5 billion, they could get a fully modernised, 21st-century commuter train service linking much of the region, including, I suspect, the airport at Mangere.

With that in place, road congestion could be its own regulator. People who were sick of watching trains zap past while they sat in a Southern Motorway snarlup would have an easy solution to their woes.

Talking trains, it is rather depressing that 2 1/2 years after taking office and scrapping the last council's support for a rail link out the front of Britomart and up to join the western line at Mt Eden, Mr Banks and transport committee chairman Greg McKeown have embraced the idea as if it was their own.

The previous regime under Christine Fletcher had opted for a surface light-rail scheme. The new fans seem to be harking back to an older underground concept, dating at least to 1923.

Since then, local and national politicians have waxed hot and cold on the idea. Sadly, both have never been hot for it together, ensuring that it happened.

I'm not holding my breath this time, even though it makes more sense, and would cost a lot less, than a certain highway.