It’s infrastructural: What a (Water)view… Part I of III

New Zealand’s largest transport project ever, the Waterview Connection, has received amazingly limited public attention. One would think that spending 2 billion (!) of the public’s money would create heated debate (pro and con). But it hasn’t – public debates are held on whether to spend similar sums to unlock our rail network with a City Centre tunnel. But the approval of the Western Ring Route sailed mostly under the radar – unless you were among the affected locals or happened to have a particular keen interest in transport.

With the works starting on 9 January next month, it is time to look at what that means for cycling in Auckland. And – surprisingly – find that even though cycling spending remains a tiny fraction of the total, it means a whole lot of good.

The Background

In 2009, government decided that progress on large projects was going too slow (not only, but particularly on the roading projects that they were very keen on). The current processes for such a project include lodging designations and consents with Council (at that time, in fact with multiple Councils). These then have to be publicly notified, hearings convened, before being decided on, usually then appealed, to be sent to Environment Court, heard again, etc… a project could spend years or even decades in the planning approval stages.

So National made a number of pretty significant changes to the relevant Resource Management Act provisions. If a project is deemed important enough, it can now be “called in”. It then bypasses all the “lower courts”, and goes straight to a newly created body, a “Board of Inquiry” (set up fresh for each project, with a mix of legal and environmental / engineering expertise). Essentially replacing all multi-stepped previous processes, this Board would make a decision (including all the myriad consent conditions) – within a 9 month timeframe after plan lodgement. And the decision would be binding.

That such a new and radical mechanism would essentially be trialled on the largest project available of course caused a lot of anxiety. Especially locals and community groups (including Cycle Action Auckland) were concerned about the new and possibly highly technical and formal process, with a very tight timeframe to get through a huge amount of issues. And no second chances, no appeals possible. Scary.

To cut short weeks and months of submissions, caucussing and hearings, of giving evidence and standing cross-examination (thanks for your work, Barbara!), as well as dozens of folders of submissions, expert evidence, and decisions documents,¹ produced over a very busy three quarters of a year – the project was approved.² But the Board of Inquiry had shown itself to be highly independent, critical of NZTA where needed, and had spent significant time understanding the concerns, both those expressed by laypeople and by expert witnesses.

Far from restricting itself to transport effects, the presiding judge and his other board members delved deeply into effects ranging from noise to air and water pollution to social and severance effects. I still wonder whether the general approval that pretty much all parties expressed was mainly the result of good judgement in selecting the five members of the Board of Inquriy, or the result of a good process – that in the end remained remarkably free of outside political pressures, or decisions made solely on a costs basis.³

The Board’s final decision placed very strong weight on mitigation for the project – not only would a large part of the new motorway be in a tunnel, the works would also require many dozen millions worth of mitigation work (maybe even some hundreds of millions, depending on what you include). Their requirements ranged from restoration works for local streams, to extensive noise walls, and replacement areas for parks and playing fields -  and finally even came to include the Waterview Cycleway.

Curiously though, the new cycleway in the end came about only because of “social effects”, rather than because of “transport effects”. NZTA had steadfastly argued that a new cycleway connecting SH16 to SH20 was not their responsibility – not only would the cycleway be in Auckland Council land (as NZTA was not seeking a surface designation above the tunnel), but also, they argued that their motorway was not making anything worse for cyclists. No negative effects – no requirement to improve the situation.

The community disagreed strongly (and with a pretty unanimous voice) – and in the end, so did the Board. However, they based their decision on the various severance effects and other negatives that would occur for the surrounding communities during the many years of construction, as well as permanently afterwards. The walk- and cycleway linking the suburbs together would be a key part of mitigating such effects. In the end, after some last minute legal-based counterarguments handily rebutted by the Board, NZTA settled with good grace – and agreed that as soon as the Council consents for the cycleway were in place, their tunnel contractor would build it. A cycling victory worth $8 million.

1) I seemed to get a new courier package with new folders every couple days – thankfully, I could ignore the hefty volumes talking of things like herpetofauna, sedimentation or air quality, and concentrate on “open space” and “transport”, and there mainly where relating to cycling.

2) The Board’s mandate crucially did not include asking the political question “Does Auckland need this motorway?” or “Would there be a better place to spend all this money?”. One submitter for Campaign for Better Transport even cheekily argued that for the amount of money spent to achieve “travel time savings” as part of the project, it would be cheaper to provide dishwashers to all West Auckland households, creating more “time savings” that way.

The Board’s scope was however limited to “What effects will this motorway have on its surroundings – and what changes does NZTA need to make to ensure the project is acceptable as per the RMA?”. And I actually agree with that. At the end, what we spend our transport money on IS a political decision, not a legal or technical one – whether we agree with the politics de jour or not.

3) We won’t know until after further Board of Inquiry processes. Will others agree that it works out well for the communities affected – like the Wellingtonians who look likely to get the same process for the “Basin Flyover” bridge project? We will see.

Part II of this blog post – to come – will discuss the “Waterview Cycleway”, and what it will mean for Auckland. Part III will discuss associated improvements to existing cycleways, and a variety of minor ancillary improvements.

[Max is the grandly-named "Infrastructure Liaison" of Cycle Action Auckland. It was that or call himself "The Infrastructure Guy"]