Transport

Andy Foster — Vote #1 for Council

ONSLOW-WESTERN

In a sense we've only begun the delivery but it is really just starting to ramp up, and the policy and planning base is there to make Wellington a much more sustainable city.

I'm also President of TRAFINZ, The New Zealand Traffic Institute, which specifically focuses on safe and sustainable transport. We've just completed our annual conference and I think all the thoughts I'll write below would have strong endorsement from the over 200 transport professionals from local and central Government and the private sector who attended. TRAFINZ is a consistent and active advocate to Government for safe and sustainable transport.

The car will remain in some form or other an important part of our transport system at least for the forseeable future, but climate change, rising fuel prices, congestion, safety and health are all compelling reasons why we must keep pushing alternatives, and I'd argue that we need to do that with increasing urgency.

This means - better quality, more reliable public transport - including specifically:

· The exciting new hub and spoke proposal* (I'm working with GW on this - details below) which is a necessary precursor to Light Rail (feasibility to be done in 2012/13),

· Real time information (roll out of 290 sites by next Sept),

· Completing bus priority through the CBD (Courtenay will be easy and dirt cheap compared to Manners) and then into the suburban arterials starting with Kent/

· Cambridge/Taranaki and Adelaide,

· Improve dialogue with the GW and transport operators (GWRC transport chair Peter Glensor and I have reinstituted meetings in recent months),

· Better integration of fares

· I think GW in association with operators needs to rethink some of its fare structures. The airport bus frequency has doubled and service significantly improved. (It should probably be also rerouted to the quicker Callabar-Cobham route)

Go Wellington Bus

Overall we have made a reasonable amount of progress - should have been even more (remember 'policy by utu' and some colleagues reversing their support for Courtenay Place bus lane?). I've also got several changes into the Ngauranga to Airport Strategy about sustainable transport.

Beyond Wellington obviously the massive rail upgrade is being delivered including extension of electrification to Waikanae. Probably the one significant (though in context pretty minor) PT improvement I'd like to see is in the Wairarapa which currently has a woeful service during the day. An additional service or two at sensible times would make a world of difference for non commuters simply wanting to visit the Wairarapa. I'm not sure how well the bus service there integrates with the train.

* Hub and spoke model - the current model has almost every bus going right through the CBD, despite many not being close to full, which clogs up the system, and means that service frequency to outlying areas is very poor. The hub and spoke model would have small more frequent feeder buses looping road the outlying areas (generally the hilltop areas) and feeding people down to core spines where there would be comfortable interchanges ( warm/dry/obviously real time info serviced/cafe ?) and from which very frequent (5 minute type) probably express buses would run into the city. Likely interchanges would be places like Miramar or Kilbirnie, Island Bay or Newtown, Karori, on Johnsonville line etc. If LRT is introduced it would work much better with a hub and spoke bus service because some of the interchanges would be with LRT rather than bus. There is a lot of work to do on this but initial thinking looks very good. It would revolutionise our public transport system

Urban form that encourages more people to live close to services and public transport, so they will walk and use PT. The city is growing - not deliberate policy, it just is - and we must accommodate people as sustainably as possible.

So in the last three years:

· We have done extensive consultation about 'areas of change' around key centres.

· Developed two major District Plan changes covering all residential areas and all suburban centres. They will lift the quality of development significantly, and focus a higher proportion of growth in sustainable areas. That also means being more sustainable and less energy dependent.

Road Transport - somehow we should be prioritising essential traffic / freight, rather than just providing more peak capacity which seems to be where Government is going. Logically they should have looked at pricing - but that's a very hard political one and neither National nor Labour have gone there.

· The elephant in the room here is RONS. I personally think that while some of it will make good sense, much is poorly directed with low benefit cost ratios, and is squeezing out safety and sustainability investment.

· They should also be taking initiatives to reduce non essential traffic by providing alternatives (better PT) first rather than road capacity.

· Whatever the Government proposes for Wellington City under RONS we will have to work with them to try to get the best possible outcome. To me that probably means undergrounding at Buckle St (for Memorial Park) or at least moving the road north away from the Carillion and undergrounding at the Basin. At the moment here we are all flying blind.

· My view is that we should approach this in terms of what is good for sustainable transport, what gives best urban design outcomes, and what is affordable (that's as a taxpayer rather than a ratepayer).

Walking Policy - I led the City's first Walking Policy (Nov 2008), and made a lot of improvements to it when I moved its introduction (ie going well beyond the officer's recommendations and picking up a lot of good points from submitters)

I am working closely with officers towards implementation which is being recalibrated from footpath extensions to a more strategic approach focussed on safer more convenient walking to the CBD, and to school. One key part is giving pedestrians greater priority at road crossings and this culture change is now getting into the transport officials of Council (no mean feat !) A major challenge is getting NZTA funding support.

Cycling Policy - I led the City's first Cycling Policy (also Nov 2008) and made even more improvements to it when I moved its introduction (ie going well beyond the officer's recommendations) - all the above comments about walking again hold true. In addition I moved the budget in 2009 from $70,000 to $220,000 for the basic work on cycling, and then was delighted to succeed (9 - 6 vote) in getting a new fund for the Strategic Cycle Network of $500,000 per annum for the next ten years. (ie I got the funding lifted 10 fold)

The first project in that network, the $4 million Porirua - Tawa stream walkway and cycleway has got NZTA officers’ recommendation to the NZTA Board, and should get Board endorsement this month. This was an idea originated about 5 years ago by then Tawa Community Board Chair Ngaire Best and the Friends of Tawa Bush Reserves. Then we will consult on details and get the project underway in February-March.

We've also just approved completing the cycleway round Baleana Bay (helpful for GHW), Celia Wade-Brown and I got cycle access opened up from the Met Office to the top of the Cable Car. I've also just got a cycleway uphill up Birdwood St (it will be good to legitimise safety for us Karori cyclists!)

Looking forward in the cycling area (I am sure I'll miss some things but here goes)

· Keeping on working with CAW and other cycling groups

· Delivering Tawa - Porirua Stream cycle/walkway - and connecting it into the route in from Porirua

· Progressing Great Harbour Way from Pencarrow through Petone into Wellington and then round our Eastern and Southern bays to Owhiro Bay - there are some very hard bits especially Petone - Ngauranga and through the Port area so this will take time and focus.

· Addressing Middleton Road as the key cycle route from the north to improve safety. Significant investment required here, hopefully as part of NZTA’s ‘Triangle Study’.

· Hutt Road cycleway - looking at options for reducing traffic and providing a safer space for cyclists - some early thinking is being done. This is tied up with Ngauranga to Aotea motorway work taking some traffic off Hutt Road.

· Ongoing improvements around the city. We've just implemented the Thorndon Quay clearway and are about to make some more modest improvements on the Hutt Road cycleway. Things like more cycle parking, more cycle friendly grates.

· Cycling promotion support and cycling events

· Developing a 'Bike Central' probably on the waterfront - cafe/cycle hire, repair and storage and showers and lockers - an advance on the Auckland model. I've had some discussions with the Waterfront Company. We need to test its viability - I would have thought that given both cafe's and bike shops exist combining the two would be a winner especially as cyclist numbers increase.

· Outside of Wellington we need to tie together all the cycle routes to the north so locals and visitors have a safe way of cycling to and from Wellington - SH1 is increasingly dangerous with increasing traffic volumes. A friend was killed last year at Te Horo, cycling along State Highway 1 – he had no alternative between Otaki where he lived and Waikanae where he taught.

· Similarly we (pushed by Celia and myself through PWT and in association with other TLAs) put in a bid for John Key's tourism cycle routes - from Martinborough into the City. We missed out but the concept of recreational and tourism cycleways into the Wairarapa is one I will keep working on.

· Greater safety on key recreation routes - round the bays / Ohiro Road , Hutt Road and Makara loop - we've got speed limits down in the rural area, need to do the same round the bays

· I've also been the cheerleader on Council for the initial establishment of Makara Peak mountain bike park, for securing vital land in the middle of the Park (and indeed earlier for securing the rest of the park as part of our Outer Green Belt), for any funding and in kind support, and occasionally for getting my hands dirty and helping out working parties.

I suppose in short, pretty well everything that WCC has done for cycling and walking and PT in the last 15 years I've played the lead role in or been the leader. Celia Wade- Brown in particular has also been a strong and consistent advocate for many years. Overall I think that despite Government focus on RONS we are on a roll and about to deliver a lot more.

Parking - I've consistently pushed that parking should prioritise short term shopping / visitor / event parking rather than long term commuter parking. Coupon parking, and on street parking tariff levels and time limits all do that. We've recently agreed further refinements to resident and coupon parking to further that end. I've tried to find a way to encourage or require private parking operators to rejig tariffs so they stop penalising short term parking vis a vis long term, but thus far it seems there are no tools in the legal arsenal to achieve this.

We deliberately removed the need to provide parking for CBD or suburban centre residential development - which has meant many people choose not to have a car, and also allowed a lot of conversions of older buildings to be achieved economically, and affordably for residents.

In the 1994 District Plan we also took a lead in New Zealand in putting ceilings rather than floors on parking requirements. That is where most authorities required commercial developments to provide carparking (x number of parks per y square metres of floor space) we took the opposite approach of not requiring any parking, and of requiring resource consent - and looking at traffic impacts - if an applicant wanted to provide more than a certain number of carparks. We have in Plan Changes 48 and 73 reduced that ceiling further and added to the issues we will consider.

Most commentators see this approach as being visionary.

Safety – We’ve done a lot of work in safety improvements around town in the last few years. I got the blame / credit for a fair bit of that – to the extent I thought some people felt I was personally pouring the concrete!

The results show we are doing much better, including for vulnerable users, in those areas where work has been done, either engineering and/or speed reduction.

We have been getting a continual stream of people requesting more safety works in their area, and often petitions from entire streets.

I want to keep rolling out the mix of engineering, speed limit reductions in high pedestrian areas, and education. We'll agree the 30kph limit for the rest of the Golden Mile this month.

Looking forward I think the sensible model is a consistent speed environment across parts of the city. Police speed tolerances are an issue for certainty - eg 30 means 34, but 50 means 59. Exactly what the speed limits should be will depend on where, but my current thinking is that 30 kph across all CBD streets except the major arterials (bypass/waterfront/Taranaki) is probably reasonable, and 40 kph in the suburbs because they are generally less constrained road environments and have fewer people. Major arterials/collector roads should stay 50 except through the suburban centres. I’m not sure whether we stick with where we've started to go (generally to 30 though Newtown is 40). School speed limits on some roads will need to be looked at, and certainly safe routes to schools to encourage more walking and cycling.

Further afield I've already mentioned cycle safety but we also need to improve safety for vehicle road users - median barriers, and associated passing lanes as appropriate on key un-separated routes with high volumes of traffic and high fatality and injury levels are a must and TRAFINZ has consistently pressed for these. In Wellington region this would include SH 1 north of Paraparaumu, SH 58 (Haywards) and the Hutt River Road. There may well be roads in the Wairarapa too that will warrant treatment.

I'm committed to a more sustainable, safe transport system and urban form. That's what I've been consistently working on and delivering on in my whole time as a councillor. Often that is hard because of some community opposition, some councillor opposition, the complexity of transport relationships or because of Government policy settings. I think we are now very well placed to make some quantum changes in safe, sustainable transport and urban form over the next decade.

Keeping our City Moving, Safe and Sustainable

I've been the Councils urban development leader for the last 6 years, and transport leader for 2 of the three years of this triennium. When we did a reshuffle and I took the chair of Strategy and Policy committee I specifically said I wanted to remain associate transport leader with specific responsibility for cycling and walking. I've been very active in leading very significant changes in the direction of shaping the city and its transport system.

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