Land Use Planning Forgotten Aspect Of Transport
July 17th, 2008
Much emphasis is placed on the need to build new roads to meet growing transport demands but too little thought appears to be given to the role land use planning can play in helping maximise the efficiency of the transport sector. This disconnection has been highlighted by Prof John Stanley of University of Sydney who has been in NZ recently as the key note speaker at the NZ Bus and Coach Assoc’s annual conference. Stanley believes urban planning in NZ, by in large, fails to take into account the need to consider modes of transport other than the private car. This leads to excessively high dependency on cars to meet people’s everyday transport needs.
Tale Of Two Bridges. Probably the best example of such car orientated planning is the North Shore of Auckland where the huge mistake was made of building a harbour bridge without any provision for public transport, cycling or walking. Compare this situation with the Sydney Harbour bridge. This has lanes for road traffic, a double track railway and space for pedestrians and cyclists. As a result, Sydney’s harbour crossing is far more efficient at moving people than Auckland’s bridge. If such foresight had been shown by the planners of the Auckland Harbour Bridge many hundreds of millions of dollars in travel costs would have been saved by giving commuters access to the rest of Auckland by more cost effective modes of transport than cars.
Business As Usual. Nation-wide large subdivisions and even whole new towns such as Pegasus north of Christchurch continue to be built with no provision for public transport which is incredibly short-sighted given the high cost of petrol and a rapidly aging population in many parts of the country. Unfortunately, it seems as though many town planners will not heed the advice of people like John Stanley and NZ will have to face the consequences of ever higher living costs as car dependency levels continue to creep up.
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