Compact city driving transport failure

Auckland mayoral candidate John Palino said today, "The recent report from the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development, backed up by surveys from the Automobile Association and Employers and Manufacturers Association show just who the real culprit behind Auckland's failing transport system is: the compact city.

"For three years I have been advocating for a new dense urban city in Auckland's south to combat the city's out of control house prices and rapidly worsening congestion problem.

"If we can concentrate growth in a new greenfield city, we can shift jobs closer to people and stop funnelling traffic into the central city.

"If we take advantage of affordable land, take the bureaucracy out of private decisions and construct at scale, we can save rates and build affordably.

"What this latest work shows is just how detrimental the council's compact city has been and will continue to be on the things Aucklanders value most - transport, affordability and housing.

"The council and Government's Auckland Transport Alignment Project is showing conclusively that everything the council is doing is making life harder for residents, costlier for business and less stable for the Reserve Bank.

"Unfortunately none of my mayoral rivals have got their head around the real issue yet - our transport problems are only superficially transport problems. In essence, they are growth management problems brought on by a council which has lost touch with the real problems residents are facing.

"It's not the transport planners, it's the urban planners who must be held to account.

"As mayor, I'll end the ideological obsession with infill, focused density in the central city where it can be served by public transport and invest in major new centres of employment and housing along transport spines. This will stop driving cars onto suburban roads and better balance traffic across the road network" says Palino.

ends

© Scoop Media