JOHN LAIRD* says the experience of Asian cities demonstrates clearly the quickest and most efficient way to get Auckland moving again.
The Herald's campaign has highlighted the city's growing traffic gridlock and increasing health risks from air pollution. Yet indecision over how to manage greater Auckland's expansion and its transport needs is threatening to worsen these problems for many years to come.
This hesitation is the more regrettable because an excellent vision - the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy: 2050 - was published, along with a regional land transport strategy, last November by the Auckland Regional Council.
The strategy incorporates progressive thinking on town planning, community building and environmentally friendly transport that has emerged globally during the 1990s. It is tailored for a world (as well as a city) whose population will likely double this century, and in which air pollution leading to global warming is the most serious environmental problem.
The twin strategies aim to achieve a greater Auckland much less dependent on the car, a city where development is focused on more densely populated growth clusters, mixed land use and convenient access to public transport.
What is missing is that no agency has been designated to implement this wide-ranging vision. Planning for the new clusters and planning for public transport must go hand-in-hand, not in an ad hoc manner. They are profoundly intertwined.
Thus, a series of actions should kick-start implementation of the strategy:
* The Government should set up a centralised authority to make policy, undertake major decisions, allocate finances, and require compliance from other statutory bodies operating in the Auckland region.
* An early commitment should be made to rapid rail as the backbone of a mass transport system, so that further choices of infrastructure can follow.
* The authority should designate which will be the growth centres cum transport hubs, and which one will be developed first as a growth model.
* Environmental principles should be the main basis for land-use planning, choice of infrastructure, and means of financing.
While living for two decades in Asia, I saw how Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong attempted to grapple with the problems of urban growth.
Bangkok has its 1996 urban plan, written by consultants from the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. It seeks to address the chaos caused by almost 3 million cars and 1.6 million two-stroke motorcycles in a city forecast to grow by several million more people in the next 25 years. The plan calls for an urban "super agency" with powers transferred from 17 uncoordinated central government agencies and ministries.
Singapore has its Urban Redevelopment Authority, a powerful agency which can designate, regulate, and finance the city's development.
Greater Auckland, with its four cities, three district councils, the ARC and a plethora of single-function agencies, needs a centralised authority. There is no central funding agency to finance the growth strategy. How can a comprehensive plan be implemented under these circumstances?
Auckland's Regional Growth Forum, from which the growth strategy emerged, constitutes an embryonic centralised agency which could be upgraded with policy-making and funding powers. The ARC and local governments could become its executive agencies. The growth forum is presently a standing committee of the ARC.
There is no doubt that rapid, light rail is the way to go. Motorway building should stop and work begin on rapid rail as soon as possible. Widening roads and building more motorways encourages more cars to enter the roads, leading to even bigger traffic jams and increased air pollution. Look at the Bangkok example.
Bangkok plans to channel growth into five high-density satellite centres beyond the existing urban sprawl, with those satellites connected to the central city and each other by rapid rail.
Auckland's growth strategy advocates centres of intensive development sited around transport hubs. It is advisable to select one such centre to develop as a model for growth. This development would give architects, property developers, infrastructure providers and planners the chance to concentrate activities and work out modes of cooperation.
The growth strategy has ample provision for incorporating green space and protecting environmentally sensitive areas. But its implementation could draw on other environmental principles for financing, such as the principle of environmental taxation.
Environmentally undesirable activities should be taxed to subsidise environmentally friendly ones. Auckland's growth and transport strategies advocate charging motorists for road use, to reduce car usage and to raise revenue. Such revenue could be used to help to finance and to operate the rapid rail system.
Singapore uses a similar, stricter, system effectively. Its Government decides how many cars can be on the roads, and then every few months auctions certificates of entitlement which allow the holders to operate various classes of motor vehicles. With a fixed number of certificates available, the highest bids win. Thus, in December 1996, the minimum price for a certificate to run a medium-sized car was about $48,000.
We must accept that the days of the car as the major means of transport are ending. International negotiations to mitigate global warming will focus on reducing this major source of carbon-dioxide pollution. This, alone, is a powerful argument to curtail plans for road building.
* John Laird is a journalist and sustainable development consultant.
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