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- Title
- The Politics of Urban Transport in New Zealand
- Author/Creator
-
Mohammad, I |
Rosier, J
- Description
- Transport planning literature documents high density urban development, low car usage, large numbers of non-motorized and public transport trips, as indicators of a high quality sustainable urban transport system. Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, relatively fulfills the requirements of these indicators. However, Wellington´s transport planning over the last fifty years has been focused on private vehicles and building wide and better roads, motorways and tunnels. Main stream politicians as well as transport professionals present these projects as urban transport achievements. Unfortunately, the massive road infrastructure projects absorb all transport funding in the city and shift attention away from the core issues of integrating land use and transport planning. In fact, all these projects were based on faulty assumptions that traffic congestion would be relieved and Wellington´s environmental quality would be improved. The result is increasing congestion and unhealthy air and noise pollution in Wellington. If Wellington wants to raise its status as a liveable city, it needs to follow the lead of cities such as Vancouver in Canada and Zurich that outperform Wellington in the liveablity city rankings. These cities assessed their performance of liveablity in the light of ‘balanced transport system planning´ approach proposed by Professor Vukan Vuchic (1999). The purpose of this paper is to apply Vuchic´s transport planning approach to carry out a document analysis reviewing the major transport and planning policies in the Wellington Region, identifying the current opportunities and constraints to achieving integration of land use and transport planning. In addition, constraints which are caused by the institutional characteristics of the government agencies will also be considered. This research finds that for Wellington to achieve success in the light of a balanced transport system planning approach; improved investment in “software” at Vuchic´s Level 1, 2 and 3. The investment in software should include improvement of coordination among different organisations, strengthening of public transport organisations and network planning for public transport development. Only small fixes improving the capability in transport planning institutions can help to integrate transport planning with land use in Wellington, which international evidence suggests, is more productive than single focus strategies on transport projects.
- Relation
- 4th Joint Congress of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and the Association of European Schools of Planning (ACSP-AESOP): Bridging the Divide: Celebrating the City, Chicago, United States 6-11 July 2008
- Relation
- http://www.acsp.org/conferences/annual_conference
- Year
- 2008
- Publisher
- Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
- Subject
-
FoR 1205 (Urban and Regional Planning) |
New Zealand |
transport |
urban planning
- Resource Type
- Conference Abstract
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