Auckland traffic facing gridlock crisis

Friday, 30 September 2016

Waikato native Brooke Bath takes on Auckland's Northern Motorway commute.

Every month 3500 more cars are pouring onto Auckland roads.

As the city's population booms, so too does the number of cars.

We currently have 1.2 million vehicles on our roads. Each year another 43,000 more vehicles, mostly single occupant, clog Auckland's sclerotic road network.

And every year your travel time worsens as a result.

There is a new Aucklander every 20 minutes - guess how most of them like to travel.

* If Auckland Council were a company, it'd be one of our biggest

* How powerful is Auckland's mayor?

* Opinion - top three things the new mayor can do to help Auckland commuters

* Which of New Zealand's major cities has the worst traffic congestion?**

Transport Blog blogger Matt Lowrie wants smart tolling.

On average the ease of your trip on our strained roading network deteriorates by about 5 per cent.

In its dry and bureaucratic language, Auckland Transport, the organisation tasked with keeping us all moving, expresses it this way - its August Network Optimisation and Resilience Report showed 'arterial road peak productivity' dropped by 5.4 per cent to a total of just 55.9 per cent peak productivity at the same time last year.

Alex Duncan is calling for a radical, Kiwi solution.

Auckland Transport says each motorway lane has the capacity to transport 2500 vehicles an hour.

If the growth of Auckland continues unabated, with a new Aucklander every 20 minutes, and each new household sporting on average two more cars, in the next 10 years we will be heading towards two million vehicles trying to squeeze down our motorways.

A 2015 OECD report said road congestion was already costing Auckland $1.25 billion per year in lost productivity.

WHAT DO MAYORAL CANDIDATES PLAN TO DO?

They all acknowledge keeping Auckland moving is a major issue.

Next to housing, repeated surveys and polls, show it is the biggest concern for voters.

Charging Aucklanders a regional fuel tax is one of the few differences between the two leading Auckland mayoral candidates' transport policies.

Front runner Phil Goff argues Aucklanders are willing to stump up to pay to get transport improvements faster. He says that includes a regional fuel tax.

His nearest rival, Vic Crone, says she is against petrol and congestion charges when many Aucklanders don't have good alternatives.

Both acknowledge we need better public transport.

Here are their plans to keep Auckland moving - in their own words.

Many say drastic action is needed to avert the vehicular and economic equivalent of a heart attack - total Auckland gridlock.

ROADS NOT THE ANSWER

Transport Blog contributor Matt Lowrie said his lobby group is 'generally supportive' of road user charges but 'there's no way [Auckland] can build its way out of congestion, you have to decrease demand'.

But his group doesn't want simple fixed-price tolling which just generates money from motorists.

It prefers a more sophisticated type of tolling which encourages people to commute at different times - called demand management pricing.

Auckland therefore could do what bigger cities like Sydney have done and toll some roads, raising revenue to fund more roads and public transport options.

Or it could be like more authoritarian Singapore and use peak demand tolling to price people off the roads at key times.

Or there could be another option.

ALEX DUNCAN AND HIS 'OUT THERE' IDEA

For 13 years Alex Duncan was Fonterra's finance director, now he wants Auckland motorists to 'levy and toll themselves'.

Duncan wants a 'road user cooperative' established, a form of demand management, which would both charge and pay vehicle owners depending on what time of day they use their vehicle.

'Let's form a cooperative and say if you want to use the roads between 7am and 9am in the morning, that's fine, you get slugged whatever the price needs to be to get reasonable commuting times, that might be $10 or $15 if you drive into town.

'But that money doesn't go to the government, it doesn't go to Auckland Council, it is paid to people wanting to use the roads in the off-peak time, between 9am and 3pm it may cost you very little, in fact you may even be paid.'

Major public transport vehicle owners like Auckland Transport and private bus companies would have their coffers flooded giving them the ability to buy and upgrade bus and train fleets perhaps funding new infrastructure like light rail, Duncan said.

'The point is money is recycled, and it's recycled to people who refrain from using roads in peak times, one of the options would be [for commuters] the credit would sit on your app and you could use that credit when you need to use the road at 9am, or they could use it for their car registration, warrant of fitness or repairs'.

Although public transport would need some funding to improve it ahead of expected demand, the user-pays cooperative system would inevitably flatten-out roading use optimising a motorway or road's productivity, Duncan said.

New roads would only be built if user volumes continued to rise across a roading network's evened-out use.

Although Duncan calls his scheme a 'cooperative', he acknowledges it would have to be legally enforceable requiring government legislation.

'It is an out-there idea but I think again, this is what New Zealand has done well in the past being innovators.'