Transport—Walking and Cycling

1.      Walking and cycling

Walking and cycling are two environmentally friendly modes of transportation, and it has low impact to environment, especially for shorter trips. Walking and cycling are very easy to get compared with other transport systems and modes. They are responsive and adaptable to changes, such as fuel shortages and price increases, and also healthy alternatives. Low cost and none cost transport modes are their key reason for transport options.

2.      Benefits of walking and cycling

Walking and cycling promotes healthy living and improved fitness, which can contributes to overall increases in productivity. They are effective to produce the pressure on road space and thus improve the environmental sustainability of the transport system by reducing harmful emissions, using less space per person, and decreasing fossil fuels burnt and modest infrastructure requirements. They also increases social interaction through creating vibrant streets which are socially safe – promotes social inclusion and community life as they are available to nearly everybody, regardless of their age, gender, education or income. Moreover, they ensure almost accesses are achievable to everyone. And most important, they have great value for money.

3.      Barriers for walking and cycling

There are three barriers for walking and cycling, physical barriers, psychological barriers, and institutional barriers. Physical barriers include distance and conditions, lack of infrastructure, inappropriate infrastructure, unsafe infrastructure or disconnected infrastructure from the right origins to destinations. Psychological barriers, for example, anxiety about crime and fear of traffic, need to be interpreted by professional psychologist. Institutional barriers consists of inadequate initial and ongoing investment in infrastructure, external costs of not using private vehicles and historical neglect of pedestrian/cyclist interests in government administrations etc.

Transport—Effective Public Transport

Public transport is increasingly called on to serve diverse objectives – ranging from providing mobility to the disadvantaged through to alleviating traffic congestion – while making efficient use of financial resources. The challenge for public transport seems daunting. It must cater for travellers with very different needs, ranging from peak-period access to the CBD to all-day access to local shops and community centres. It also needs to provide attractive service frequencies and operating hours for multiple destinations, while maintaining high occupancy rates. One approach to diverse travel patterns is to provide separate services for different markets: express buses and trains for peak commuters; regular buses for local trips along busy corridors; paratransit for low-demand corridors and times. The problem with this approach is that the more public transport becomes tailor-made, the more it surrenders its environmental and economic advantages. A public transport system offering a direct service between every origin and destination would have low frequencies, low occupancies, high costs and high greenhouse emissions per passenger.

The alternative is networks. This approach enables ‘anywhere-to-anywhere’ travel while keeping occupancy rates high, by carrying different kinds of travellers on the same services. Transfers are integral to a public transport system that offers access to a large number of potential destinations at an affordable cost to the operator. Traditional public transport planning has treated transfers as an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs, but the network approach makes them the building blocks of a mult-idestinational system. While transfers present many new travel opportunities, they also impose inconvenience. Creating effective transfer-based public transport systems requires careful planning to ensure that the inconvenience is reduced to the minimum possible. Four key elements underpin the creation of high-quality, transfer-based networks:

1. A simple line structure: simplicity makes the network easier for passengers to understand, and it reduces the resources that an operator must provide.

2. Stable line and operating patterns: a network must also be stable. The idea is to provide a consistent, high-quality service across the network all day, rather than operating different service types in peak, off-peak, night and weekend time periods.

3. Convenient transfers: easy transferring requires attention to timetables and physical facilities. ‘Random’ transfers are possible when all lines serving an interchange point operate frequently, generally every 10 minutes or better. ‘Timed’ transfers are needed when services are less frequent, and the timetables for connecting lines must be coordinated.

4. Appropriate institutions and fare systems: fare systems must allow free transfers. The pooling of fare revenues is essential for this; and to allow cross subsidies. Planning on a whole-of-system basis seems to require a single responsible regional agency.

Transport—Traffic Demand Management

TDM is an abstraction of ‘Travel (or Transportation) Demand Management’, it is defined as “a set of tools to offer people better travel information and opportunities and help people choose to reduce their need to travel especially by car. TDM is wide-ranging and covers tools and techniques ranging from land use planning to educating workplaces on the benefits of introducing parking management systems” recently .

The reason why TDM was introduced is traffic problems, which exist and have a potential increase in metropolis area. It seems that of efficient solutions are not widen the road to enhance the infrastructure, or limit the driving speed any more, but other way, more practical and effective immediately.

Travel Demand Management is measures that used to induce, encourage, persuade, or enforce individuals to change their travel habits and favours by offering direct and indirect choices, and consequently moderate the sequent that are generated by increasing traffic congestion, and even social, economic, and environmental problems, for instance, air pollution, noise pollution, excessive consumption of nonrenewable natural resources and so on. Travel Demand Management is strategies and policies, which keen to concern the implementation and influence of travelers’ behaviour, in a way of changing their travel mode, decreasing the usage of vehicles, or restricting their use in time or in space. In another words, TDM anticipate to encourage employers and employees choose other ways of transportation rather than the private car. In a manner of speaking, positive impacts on land use, health, and social, economic and environmental significance that are generated by TDM could be seen in the long term.

TDM measures are a sequence of policies, and can be regulations with aims of influencing individuals and their behaviour, on reducing private vehicle usage, providing alternative choices, and restricting their actions. Several methods are included in TDM measures, such as, ‘pull and push’ measures, regulatory, planning policies, and pricing. ‘Pull’ measures refer to policies or regulations that encourage alternative of transportation mode, whereas, ‘push’ measures refer to policies or regulations that discourage individuals’ vehicle use.

Another concept of TDM measures category is non-fiscal measures and fiscal measures. Non-fiscal measures include those policies that are adopted by planners and policy makers, and fiscal measures are relevant to costs, in another word, costs that related to individuals, such as fuel taxes, parking charges.

Governance—How to meet the challenges of Auckland Governance Reform

The governing body is the strategies, policies, and decision-maker in regional scale, so as the leader of the region the new Auckland Council is responsible for what it is going to do. Firstly, the governing body should constitute reasonable instruments at the first place in a big picture, efficient, reliable, and executable strategies determine the sustainability of development and well-beings (economic, social, environmental, and cultural). Secondly, relationships between governing body and local boards, as well as other communities and groups should be enhanced. Because only if these institutions execute, communicate, interrelate, and co-operate perfectly and there could be pleasurable sustainable development. Thirdly, the governing body has to always put people first, consider what people are thinking, concerns what people mostly need, make decisions on the behalf of its own people. Fourthly, figure out ways to balance the sustainable development and population growth, and meanwhile, protect environment. Fifthly, the governing body and local boards have to pursue a sustainable development approach, and apply it in the different levels. Sixthly, the governing body should try its best to ensure the equity and equality, and decrease the gap between the rich and the poor as well. Infrastructures of communities must be maintained and enhanced in terms of improving people’s living standard and quality of life.

Governance—Major Challenges of Auckland Governance Reform

According to the Royal Commission’s report, several main challenges are facing the new city council, its associated institutions, and its planning and policy instruments. The first challenge is ‘to address the inefficiencies’, the second one is ‘to ensure effective service delivery through a united governance structure’, the third challenge is ‘to address the poor history of Auckland’s infrastructure development and to have greater community involvement’, and the fourth challenge is the problems generated by population growth. Population growth increases in a rapid speed in Auckland. And According to Dr Bruce Hucker’s report, the population of Auckland can achieve to two million by the year of 2031. It is all about the populations that concerns. People need food, clothes, and shelter to satisfy their basic needs. And further more would be pressure on social and physical infrastructure. How to manage limitless development demand within a limit resource circumstance, how to resolve the conflicts between development and environment, how to shorten the gap between the rich and the poor, how to ensure the equity and the equality, how to maintain well-being in economic, social, cultural, and environmental context, how to allocate the funding for local boards, how to resolve education problems, how to change the actuality that already existed, such as household crowding, how to do their duty efficiently for both governing body and local boards, how to improve the living standard of Aucklanders, and how to enhance the quality of life in Auckland region, all of these problems are contributed by rapid population growth.

Governance—Key Issues of Auckland Governance Reform

There is not a strategy that is fully integrated or aligned to provide a clearly oriented goal in the region’s vision, although the fact is that plenty of strategies are generated.

Lack of crucial decision maker and fragmented governance structure give rise to adversely impact on economic and community development. The possibility of developing and prospering in Auckland region was resulted in by weak accountability, fragmented and complex decision-making processes, and competing leadership. Fragmented powers and accountabilities for funding and services directly resulted in fails of delivering on strategy. The conflict between the city councils and the regional council, as most of the wealth of the region is controlled by the city councils, and obviously the regional council could not get sufficient funding. Decisions often seems to be located at wrong government (national or local sphere) while the original intentions are for the region. ‘There is no sufficient revenue at the regional level’.  The complex and fragmented governance structure causes uncertainty, unclearly, and misunderstanding, in another word, the Auckland lacks of single voice and straight goal. Lack of funders is crucial impacts on decision making, extremely significant for transport. The government relies too much on statutory and voluntary joint decision-making fora. ‘There are inefficiencies and inconsistent standards and financial impacts due to duplication and transaction costs’.

Governance—Auckland Governance Reforms

In the new Auckland City Council, there will be two decision-making groups or tiers—the Mayor of Auckland and professional counselors as the governing body, and local boards which are component by 21 boards.

As the governing body, the Mayor is elected to provide leadership, and has crucial powers to articulate and promote a vision for Auckland, as well as the purpose of achieving the vision. As Rodney Hide said in his speech:

    ‘The Mayor will lead the development of Council plans, policies and budgets, and ensure there is effective engagement between the Auckland Council and the people of Auckland’.

Although, local boards take their responsibilities in different scale compared with the governing body. Local boards are assistance for governing body, although they are completely new regime for local government, they are very important in local decisions making, activities action, and facilities maintaining. One of their duties is to assistant the governing body to provide better communities in terms of well ensured community interests. Moreover, the consent of policies, strategies, plans and by-laws are always concerned by local boards to create wonderful communities by promoting well-being. And it is local boards’ obligation that gives the Auckland Council preferences on how to allocate the funding in their local areas.

There is also a vital component of the reforms—the Auckland Transition Agency (ATA), which was established in 2009, guides, manage, and oversee the relationships between the new council and the local boards in the process of forming the new city council. ATA, although it existed once the new Auckland Council was established, it helped the council and local boards retained their responsibilities, as well as determined the decision-making. ATA provided a guide of how the relationships between the governing body and local boards are going to be in its very short lifetime until November of 2010.

Other important institutions are the Council Controlled Organisations (CCO’s), Auckland Council Investment Ltd (ACIL), Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development Ltd (TEED), Regional Facilities Auckland (RFA), Auckland Council Property Ltd (ACPL), and the Auckland Waterfront Development Agency (AWDA).

Maori Advisory board and additional Pacific and Ethnic Advisory panels are other important governance structures in new Auckland City.