Auckland Transport boss says city won’t even get halfway to 2030 climate targets at this rate

Wednesday, 26 July 2023

Auckland Transport CEO Dean Kimpton on the council's Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway

Auckland may get less than halfway to its 2030 transport emission target, according to the head of the city’s transport agency.

Auckland Transport (AT)chief executive Dean Kimpton has told Stuff that on the current path, he thinks only about 40% of the Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway (TERP) 2030 goals would be achieved.

Kimpton, who has been in the role for just over three months, also said he was unhappy AT had not done what the council asked – and come up with a two-year quickstart plan on emmissions reduction.

In an interview with Stuff, Kimpton highlighted the gap between the council’s aspirations to cut emissions and what the agency believed was do-able with current, and foreseeable, funding.

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Dean Kimpton the chief executive of Auckland Transport

“I don’t think we are going to get there on our current trajectory,” said Kimpton on the aim to halve driving by 2030.

Kimpton said not only was funding insufficient, but the scale of how Aucklanders would need to change their lives was a conversation that needed to be led by politicians.

The Traffic Emissions Reduction Pathway seeks a halving of driving by 2030

“If we are going to be real between the aspiration and the delivery of it, then we need to have these honest conversations - not just about what we [AT] do, but about what everybody does to achieve that target,” Kimpton said.

Signing off TERP was a much-vaunted achievement of the previous council shortly before the October local body election, calling for a 64% cut in transport emissions by 2030.

It meant the distance driven by Aucklanders would need to halve and public transport use would need to rise six-fold from current levels, along with an exponential increase in walking and cycling.

However, the political call for action has been dulled by a letter from the mayor Wayne Brown, who was elected in October 2022, telling AT to do what it could with available funding.

Critics of the lack of action on TERP argued that wording had given AT an escape route.

Kimpton illustrated the gap between ambition and funding by pointing to the draft 10-year public transport plan aiming to reach 150 million trips by 2031.

He said AT’s aspiration was to hit 200 million trips, but TERP called for 550 million.

The stance on TERP has left the councillor leading the climate change portfolio, Richard Hills, frustrated.

“First AT ignored our climate plan, then they said we needed an emissions reduction plan, we worked on that in partnership with them, they approved the TERP and they promised to complete early actions before it was approved, then an implementation plan, none of that was done,” Hills said.

“While the world is breaking hottest day records and the city has recently had record floods, AT still doesn’t seem to believe they need to consider climate change in every decision and project,” he said.

Auckland Transport will put its approach to TERP before councillors in a confidential workshop in August, and then at the council’s Transport and Infrastructure Committee.