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Jammed
Auckland Auckland's roads are almost unusable during weekday rush hours. This fact has been known for years, what to do about it is far from agreed on. The opinions about what to do are unsurprisingly contradictory and uncompromising, reflecting the perceived self-interest of the contending powers: rail owners, bus owners, truck owners, car owners - explained in detail in issues 1 and 2 of pl.net magazine. The pollution problem due to vehicles has a different mix of contending interests, first of all the addition of thousands of diesel-burning small trucks in the form of the four-wheel drive `family' off-road vehicle. The main interest pushing the diesel-fume problem is the remote and uncontrollable manufacturer of the cars and trucks we drive and their local pushers, the car sales industry. 0800-SMOKEY The smoky vehicle hotline has now fielded 30000 call from Aucklanders. It has spawned its own website www.smokey.org.nz They will be accumulating valuable information on the nature (age, model, fuel type etc) of the culprits. There is great concern about transport and pollution, but hand-wringing concern is worse than useless. Self-Action In the face of contradictory forces the only way forward is self-reflection and from that a willingness to cooperate and compromise. Everyone (and it is nearly everyone in New Zealand) has to reflect on their own personal transport agenda, the inevitable bad consequences of selfishness and from that alter personal behaviour. What this means in the current and immediate environmental situation is, in my opinion, some quite specific moves: * The Auckland City Councils should realise they are the only ones interested and capable of buying or leasing city rail corridors and therefore, any prices for lease or sale should be negotiated with Tranz Rail on the basis of a very hard-nosed approach from councels. The current deal in Auckland seeing $65 million being offered for lease of rail corridors is absurdly high, and should be backed away from. * The new policy of Tranz Rail to sell-off chunks of the same rail they were given for $1 lease is a transparent act of gouging. The Government can and should bring all interested parties together and come up with a plan to bring rail back into a coordinated system, either in public hands or state-owned enterprises or joint venture between local bodies, central government and private companies. * Truck owners have to work in a cooperative way with rail and stop trying to monopolise the transport industry. * Bus owners will have to cooperate with councils and rail to coordinate public transport so that drive, bus and ride unified systems work in all major cities. * Car owners will need to make decisions about where we live and work and shop and attend school according to the principle of minimising the distances from home to these daily destinations AND when travelling, make the private car the option of last resort, not first resort AND buy and use low emission small engine vehicles by preference. * Councils and central government will have to stop trying to please everybody (and pleasing nobody) by making some hard decisions about use of tax money and regulatory power and stop concentrating purely on re-election. The odds of the above happening before gridlock? You know the odds, now beat them...
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