Double Disapointment

As you will know by now, the City and Regional Council's have decided to halt all consultation, and go with the "base case" rail option - an option which they never included in the scenarios for public consultation.

I saw a lot of advantages in the busway, so I'm disappointed in their decision. But I'm even more disappointed in how the decision was made:

• The consultation process was abandoned part way through. In particular, it was abandonned before the promised consulation on the Councils' final choice.


• Much has been made of Labour's position on the issue. Michael Cullen's official letter on the topic is cusory at best. It is disapointing to see that most of it's content was actually written by the CEO of ONTRACK. Did the Minster of Finance more-or-less delegate his decision to ONTRACK, an organisation which presumably has a vested interest in the outcome, and which describes itself as "an advocate for rail"? Yes, he should have consulted with rail advocates, but not only with rail advocates.


• The technical report, by consultants SKM, is dissapointing. It seems to make a number of questionable assumptions. For instance, it assumes that the "Petone-Grenada" link will be built, but I understand that's now in some doubt. That link has a significant impact on the very road congestion at the heart of this issue (Ngaruanga Gorge). I would also question the stated assumption that the buses would travel at the same speed as the trains. Surely the buses can do better than an average of 30kph! Surely a more valid assumption would be that a busway bus would take about the same time as the equivalent off-peak car journey (J'Ville to Wgtn via Ngaio Gorge), which takes 40% less time than the train.


• The involvement of the Greens and United Future is disapointing. It's understandable in the case of the Greens, although they pushed it a bit too far. It's not so understandable in the case of Ohariu-Belmont's MP, Peter Dunne. He has just campaigned for $1 billion of road spending on Transmission Gully. That's a road so that people who live far beyond the northern boundary of his electorate can drive their cars to work more easily, creating more road congestion in his electorate. When he gets the chance to make things up to his own supporters, by using the busway to solve the road congestion he's created, he backs rail instead. We've now seen him run two transport campaigns, Transmission Gully and rail-verus-busway, which individually and collectively leave his own supporters worse off.

What do you think?