Graeme Scott: Busway, not motorway, the answer to eastern puzzle

COMMENT

The debate on the economic and social importance of the urban environment is looming large on the political horizon. Too often that debate is assumed to be about paving patterns, seats and street planting.

Looking at the big picture in urban design is essential in achieving our objective - building a high-quality city that will foster creativity, growth and diversity. Transport planning is a dominant feature of that big picture.

In transport, Auckland is at a crucial crossroads. Do we press on with car-based solutions to our urgent needs, or do we try something new?

The eastern corridor debate encapsulates the issues neatly. Although the consultants' recommendations for the corridor are strenuous in their emphasis on quality public transport, their conclusions equate to a vote for more roads, with bus-lanes as a sideshow and rail left to do its best against the cars and buses directly alongside.

The Institute of Architects believes the one-size-fits-all proposal, containing many different transport modes in the corridor, is flawed in three main ways:

* Clear signals about possible different ways of developing the city are absent. Will it encourage some to choose new arrangements of houses or apartments, to actively seek work near to the transport corridor, for instance? Will the resulting development allow fewer cars for each household?

The general traffic lanes running the length of the corridor do nothing to suggest that new forms of development which are less car-dependent will emerge in the Panmure, Glen Innes or Mt Wellington quarry areas. The public transport options in the report can be seen as fashionable, but lacking commitment to making them work.

* The expense of providing all transport modes in most of the corridor is prohibitively high, and unjustified by the numbers of people to be served. The concern, expressed well by Papakura Mayor David Buist, is that attention will be diverted from the other vital transport initiatives around greater Auckland. Many of these could be implemented quickly if the political will were more focused.

* The environmental effects, particularly in the Purewa Creek and Hobson Bay areas, are extremely damaging. These cannot be justified by the numbers of people travelling on the eastern corridor to the city centre, which the report puts at just 8 per cent of those travellers.

Other objectives in the report, such as creating a ring-road system for Auckland, or providing an option to State Highway 1, would be much better and more quickly met in other ways, such as the completion of the SH20 motorway linking the Southern and Northwestern Motorways.

There are real transport needs to be met in the east of Auckland, both for goods and services and people.

Let's look at these two needs separately. There is already a high-quality new connection of the existing motorway to the port through Grafton Gully. This motorway also connects well to all industrial areas except East Tamaki and, arguably, Panmure. Completing these connections along Te Rakau Drive as part of the eastern corridor is, by the report's own admission, inferior to the so-called Allens Rd option.

The Allens Rd option is worth pursuing now, rather than 20 years out as suggested in the report. This, together with the motorway connection at the Waiouru Peninsula, will provide good road connections for goods and services for industry to the Southern Motorway and the port.

To let the Southern Motorway fulfil its role in the movement of goods and services, we clearly need to reduce the number of single-occupant cars at peak times. This can be done with a basket of measures, each of which will contribute. Key steps are:

* The completion of the SH20 motorway from Manukau City to Rosebank Rd.

* A dramatic increase in the quality of the rail service, with feeder bus services and integrated ticketing.

* A busway through the eastern corridor from Manukau City to Glen Innes.

This busway, dedicated and continuous, extends from the Wiri railway station to the Glen Innes railway station, up Te Irirangi Drive past Botany Downs. At this point, it heads further north than the proposed eastern corridor, penetrating deeper into residential Pakuranga to increase the number of people living within walking distance of a busway station.

From Pakuranga it passes along Lagoon Drive to Panmure and up Pilkington Rd to Glenn Innes and Auckland University's Tamaki campus. At this point, travellers to the city centre transfer to frequent commuter trains on the rail lines across Hobson Bay. A third rail line on this section, suggested in the report, is a probability.

The busway can be developed incrementally, starting tomorrow. Busway expertise can be shared with the North Shore busway project. And, most importantly, it will encourage the changes in lifestyle and housing options that are needed in a diverse and sustainable city.

There must be focused action on public transport issues now, not just words. The eastern corridor, with a growing population to serve in Howick, Botany and Pakuranga, and with development prospects in Panmure, Glenn Innes and Mt Wellington, has to be a test case of how serious we are about this.

Certainly, some important roading connections must be completed and, in general these should create a motorway bypass away from the Auckland city centre. A motorway across iconic Hobson Bay discharging into the central city cannot be part of this vision.

A commitment to a rail and busway solution for the eastern corridor may be a more difficult vision now, but from our grandchildren's viewpoint, it would be the start of something big.

* Graeme Scott chairs the urban issues group of the Institute of Architects' Auckland branch.