Super City Advantages ?!

The new Auckland Council will merge the existing council operations of the current eight councils into a single service provider. The advantages of this include:

• One rating system instead of 8 rating authorities.
• One rates bill instead of two per property.
• One IT data system instead of 8 separate council data systems.
• One regional transport authority instead of 8 local transport entities.
• One water and wastewater provider instead of 8 water providers.
• One Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP).
• One district plan instead of 7 different district plans.

Overall the advantages in one sentence are that everything becomes one, and everything becomes simple. The 8 rating authorities, 8 council data systems, 8 local transport entities, 8 water and wastewater providers, 8 Long Term Council Community Plan, and 7 district plans are all becomes 1 system. Obviously, it greatly cuts off the labor cost, saves physical and natural resources. Everything would be designed in a ‘big picture’. There is no more arguing, confusing and misunderstanding among different councils.

However, this situation indicates that every plan, activity and strategy taken by the Auckland Super City Council has to be seriously, carefully and considering four well-beings for all Auckland citizens. In other words, the eight times of stress from eight councils are all compressed on one. Each initiative by the new council would affect ever further on both positive and negative sides.  

What is Super City?

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance delivered a report to government to state the future of Auckland, in March 2009. The report recommended that Auckland should change another way to run which would provide better outcomes to both government and citizens.

Eventually, the government accepted the Royal Commission’s report. Then the Auckland Transition Agency (ATA) was set up in May 2009, to deal with all the transition process. The main task of Auckland Transition Agency is to combine all the local councils across Auckland Regional into a single, unified, government entity. To be exact, the old Auckland governing structure was 1 Auckland Regional Council, 3 district councils, 4 city councils and 30 community boards. Now it is replaced by a single Auckland Council and 21 elected local boards.

In October 2010, the ATA is already completing all the groundwork. On 1^st of November 2010, Auckland’s eight existing local bodies merged into a single new local governance structure which now we call it Auckland Super City.

The new Auckland Council will have one mayor and 20 councilors elected from 13 wards from Franklin to Rodney. This replaces 7 city mayors and a regional council chair, 13 regional councilors and 96 territorial authority councilors.

Under the new scheme the single mayor and the 20 councilors will focus on the “big picture” and make decisions that affect the Auckland region.

Some transportation modes

Transportation mode is the tool to provide people and freight with mobilities. Transportation mode is the heart of transportation network design. Different types of transportation modes give different working outcomes. In allusion to the situation for different countries, governments should promote to corresponding mode. However, the two basic transportation mode types are land and air.

Land transportation mode mainly has road transportation and rail transportation. Road infrastructures are large consumers of space with the lowest level of physical constraints among transportation modes. However, physical constraints are significant in road construction with substantial additional costs to overcome features such as rivers or rugged terrain. Railways are composed of traced paths on which are bound vehicles. They have an average level of physical constrains linked to the types of locomotives and a low gradient is required, particularly for freight.

Air transportation is the main transportation mode of air. Air routes are practically unlimited. Air transport constraints are multidimensional and include the site the climate, fog and aerial currents. Air activities are linked to the tertiary and quaternary sectors, notably finance and tourism, which lean on the long distance mobility of people. More recently, air transportation has been accommodating growing quantities of high value freight and is playing a growing role in global logistics.

Our current strategies

Sustainable transportation network is transportation vision for governments all around the world. Obviously, to create a sustainable transportation network is an aim of New Zealand government as well. Currently, the Ministry of Transport in New Zealand greatly promotes variance of strategies to make the vision come true, such as fixing the transportation network, doing road project, promoting public transport, encouraging bike/walk cycling, and so on.

Promoting bike cycling is one of the most important strategies from government. Riding bike is a fantastic way to get and enjoy our life. The government even lends some bikes to citizens to encourge this activity. Recent activities involve Bike to Work, Family Bike Evening, Go by Bike Breakfast Day, Bike Expeditions, Try My Bike win, and cheese evening and so on.

Carpool test spread is another possible activity. Commuters fed up with traffic have a chance to join a pilot carpooling scheme. The scheme involves members gathering at a central location in Silverdale to carpool en route to Albany station. The scheme is an inexpensive but premium way to carpool. The savings in terms of petrol costs and environment are huge.

Taking the train is a good way to travel as well. So far, railway network has been greatly promoted, and work efficiently. Ride a train from south Auckland into Britomart any weekday morning and chances are you could be sitting next to Mayor Len Brown. He started taking the train to work as part of a campaign to double the number of Aucklanders using public transport over the next decade.

Riding bike, carpool and taking a train are all sustainable way to travel. And the government already does a lot of work to encourage those ways. To be one of the citizens’ of New Zealand, we have responsibility to cooperate with government strategies to create a better environment for all of us.

Lessons to be learned from Lake Road works

The traffic congestion issue arising by the Lake Road works is only a case study of such mismanaged project. As a result, those projects normally end of from residents’ complaint and government claptrap.

I personally suffered from the traffic chaos on Lake Road once. I can totally understand why residents and business owners complaint about it. It is a very hard time. Every second is tantalizing. It seems like there are workers always standing around and not actually doing anything. You are sitting in your car doing nothing, but wasting of time, wasting of petrol, feeling hungry waiting for them doing some ‘work’. Everything is ridiculous. The whole project is an absolute joke.

However, we have learned three things from this project. Firstly, the Auckland Transport is miscommunication with the residents and business owners. Therefore, the citizens are feeling confused and misunderstanding about government works. The short-term inconvenient would cause citizens against government and not gain for the long-term outcomes.

Secondly, poor traffic management was a direct cause of much of the traffic chaos. The traffic management had been badly handled, particularly with lanes being closed during the peak traffic hours.

Thirdly, the project progress has not followed by the schedule. The Auckland chief executive David Warburton stated that ‘opportunities to make significant progresses were missed in the summer of 2009 and 2010 with a five-month break between contracts. Auckland Transport needs to remember that project inefficiencies have a direct economic impact on our local economy’.

No matter it is the government or a normal person, we made mistakes sometime. But at least we learn from the lessons and move on.

Few words about Lake Road project

The $8 million upgrade of Lade Road between Napier Ave and Jutland Road was initiated by the North Shore City Council, which was dissolved last year. The project started in early 2010. It involves undergrounding of power lines and road widening to make room for two traffic lanes and a cycle lane on each direction.

However, there was a traffic chaos in Takapuna last Thursday as road closures brought peak hour traffic to standstill. Moreover, business owners are becoming more and more frustrated as the Lake Road upgrade project starts to affect their income. One of the owners said ‘the speed of it is chronically showed and I can’t see the reason why. It’s becoming an absolute joke for everybody. What happened was a huge disappointment and it’s impacting on the local economy. People are extremely upset.’

The transportation network upgrade operates very often around us. However, does it really improve our life? Obviously, the project operating in Takapuna does not work really well. It already affects people’s mental and spiritual wellbeing. In other word, this transportation activity is hurting citizen’s health.

New Zealand Transportation

Transportation system is always a popular issue in New Zealand. Both government and citizens are keen to finding a way to promote a sustainable transportation network. Therefore, we could see road works everywhere, new transport strategies in almost every half year, and series research on new transport tools and modes. However, now the transport system is still not optimizing. The most significant reason emerged as the high ratio of car occupant per person, which is above the average global standard. This fact indicates that public transport tools are not working efficient and effective.

Let us use Auckland as a case study. The two maps below show the public transport route.

It seems like great network which covered most main roads and spur trucks. However, my personal experience in the bus routes tells me that the network has not been designed in a comprehensive and efficient way. Personally speaking, the bus route in north shore is totally wasting of time. All the buses just go round and round, taking forever to my destination. Taking public transportation for example, it would take you five minutes to wait for the bus, half hour to get the destination, and cost $1.70 per stage. Or when you drive your private vehicle, it would spend 15 minutes driving on the way, 5 minutes to find a car parking, and it would cost $0.80 for petrol. Which way you would do? The answer is obvious. And that is what our real life is.