Ok, I know this image has a lot of issues. It is a 256 color gif which means it is dithered to hell. Whoever took it has issues with colour balance, tilt and even the focus point. But none of that matters. It certainly makes its point about what kind of road space we’re paying colossal amounts for and for what?
Basically because there are a pile of numerically illiterate morons at the New Zealand Transport Authority and as National MPs who can’t seem to handle the fact that car traffic numbers are just dropping. FFS they have just let through some more motorway builds in Auckland that we probably don’t need. I guess it is one way for National MPs to get re-elected on the stupid vote. Why? As Matt L at Auckland Transport Blog says
I imagine it would have been fairly embarrassing for the government if it had to go through some public consultation and the public rejected the projects.
Combined they are a commitment to more than a billion dollars of expenditure for roads that make little economic sense in era when private car usage in Auckland is going down as petrol prices go up (links in the images).
And meanwhile the idiotic traffic planners at NZ Transport Authority appear to be so in love with their obsession with a mythical traffic growth pattern that they are ignoring the reality of the actual decade long pattern of static state highway growth.
And even more telling that Aucklanders don’t drive as much – so where in the hell are the drivers that are meant to populate the billions of dollars of roads coming from? Just look at the falling rate of kilometres people are travelling.
But then look at how traffic planners actually operate…
As Matt L says (BTW: I love Auckland Transport blog)
This graph was from a year ago and in the past when I’ve posed it, there have been some that say “look it’s starting to rise again” but the reality is it isn’t. The most recent monthly data shows traffic have flat-lined and volumes are still less than it was a decade ago (monthly figures only started in late 2007).
Meanwhile Auckland public transport even in its current appalling state keeps slowly rising as more new capacity is added. That is despite the complete screwup on integrated ticketing that apparently resulted from Stephen Joyce preventing intervention by ARTA in the snapper card decision a few years ago. Presumably to allow his mates in Infratil to continue to extract money out of Auckland public transport. Basically I can’t see any other logical reason for him to make such a colossal error of judgement.
Of course the biggest single problem with public transport in NZ and especially in Auckland has to the the funding of infrastructure. Why? Well despite their insane optimism about the mythical maniacs driving on motorways, they constantly underestimate the takeup on infrastructure of public transport when we finally extract it from dipshit politicians who are so in love with road builders. Britomart is a good example. Even without the City Rail Link that would allow the rail system in Auckland to finally allow trains to operate efficiently where required, people are using the station far more than projected.. I’d love to show the graph of parking costs in central Auckland to demonstrate one reason why. I use buses to go into town, or even taxis. They are cheaper than parking.
Of course there is always the “disaster” of Northern busway travelling to and from the North Shore. Despite the right wing idiots (like John Roughan* in 2007 and even now in 2013) commenting throughout its construction, it appears to have been successful. Of course providing a system that allows commuters read while rapidly going to and from work is going to be unsuccessful right? Wrong. The predictions of loadings caused the only real problem. They didn’t multistory the parking lots at the station because some fools thought that traffic would rise so slowly that they’d never need it. Dickheads…
Essentially, Aucklanders are coming out of their cars for exactly the reason displayed in the flashing image above. Now while this would be a problem for road makers if they hadn’t already pocketed the NZTA planners and Stephen Joyce/Gerry Brownlee/etc and got them wasting taxpayers money by fast tracking useless motorway projects for their profits. In the meantime each public transport project is done with central government reluctance and but has immense usage and popularity. Basically Aucklanders probably need to tear the transport taxes from the central government so we can build the transport system we need. That is something I tghink a lot of Aucklanders would want to vote for…
My thanks to the amazing bloggers at Transport Blog (hey, they changed their name – still mostly Auckland 🙂 ).
* I’ve come to the conclusion that John Roughan must be one of the best predictors of anything in Auckland. Basically whatever he says should be done is completely opposite to what should be done. It is so consistent that he must be a perfect reverse midas stone for someone. If you always bet against him, then you’re far more likely to be right. But he is also so completely dumb. After listening to him moan about how much of a pain that the traffic from the North Shore is, you’d have to ask why he hasn’t just hopped on a bus?
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