Posts by Matthew Poole
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Sam F,
Shall we tear up Britomart, too? After all, it's only there so we corporate whores can use the rail service and it was paid for by good, hard-working ratepayers and taxpayers.
ETA: Snap! It's not polite to edit your entire post and change its thrust :P
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Some workers in the CBD are highly-paid. Many are not. There are lots of secretaries, and PA’s, and council workers, and fresh graduates, who’re being paid the average wage or less. They’re very definitely not highly-paid, and many of them never will be. For all the ones who move into highly-paid positions in the future there will be others coming in below them who are not highly paid.
The agglomeration effect of concentrating jobs in a small area has benefits to the companies based in that area. This is not controversial, unless you’re Steven Joyce trying to find excuses for not funding the CBD tunnel. It also has general benefits to the community by reducing stress on infrastructure.You’re still framing this as purely beneficial to those working in the CBD. It’s not, and never has been, just about the CBD. It’s about the entire rail network, across the whole region, and about unlocking its potential. Britomart as a terminating station is a bottleneck, and there’s only so much that can be done to route around it before we get back to the point of there being insufficient network capacity to keep growing patronage. The tunnel makes many things possible, including rail through the south-western suburbs. Rail that will serve all those notoriously over-paid residents of Mangere Bridge and Puhiniui, and those highly-paid blue-collar workers in the vicinity of the airport.
As for how it benefits the whole economy, more of those highly-paid workers of whom you are so dismissive means more taxation income. No trickle-down, just hard-nosed income tax to pay for government services. Assuming we don’t follow through the “low taxes grow the economy” nonsense to the logical conclusion and just abolish income tax completely. But even then those workers will still need to eat, and entertain themselves, and all those other consumptive activities that produce tax income in other ways. Plus, at the income level of the average CBD worker, trickle down is very real. They're not the uber-wealthy with squillions in the bank, and most of their income still gets spent. Even those on $100k still spend more of their money than they save, in the main. Trickle down's true mythology doesn't really kick in until you get to the very large salaries or the rich-list.
You’re the first person I’ve seen who doesn’t like the tunnel because it’s supposedly some form of corporate welfare. The first, and only, person. I’ve seen people who don’t like it because they oppose rail. Some don’t like it because they oppose public transport. Some don’t like it because they don’t understand the issues with Britomart’s current configuration (though those folk generally change their mind once it’s explained that the tunnel will more than double the capacity of Britomart). You have the unique distinction of being the first person I’ve seen who’s expressed their dislike in terms of classism, corporate welfare, and a desire to see the demise of the agglomeration benefits that come from the CBD.
Oh, and if you want to say it’s all about highly-paid workers, why doesn’t Wellington CBD do better? Wellington has the highest average rate of pay in the country, or did last time I checked. It’s not like Auckland’s got more people working in the central city than work in the CBD in Wellington.
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And the trucking lobby managed to astroturf its way out of doing so.
Incredibly, with the support of all the user-pays polly tubbies in the House. Act couldn't get on board the "Evil Labour are out to screw truckies" wagon fast enough. It was quite the exercise in cognitive dissonance.
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
In the same way that the public transport funding debate is framed in terms that imply roads miraculously cost nothing to use. We never see anti-PT crusaders fessing up to the enormous, invisible subsidies that we fork out to road users by not having congestion charging.
One of the most infuriating posters on J.Arbury's blog is a pseudo-libertarian who's not quite fully grasped libertarian principles. What he does have a grasp on, though, is that not having congestion charges is a way to let car drivers pretend their choice to drive on congested roads is free of cost to society. The whole "If you're stuck in traffic, it's not the traffic that's the problem, you are the problem" idea. -
Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Wilfully ignoring my points won’t make their truthiness go away, Angus.
If the whole country benefits, why should only the users pay? IBM’s survey published a couple of days ago put the drag on Auckland’s economy from congestion at 2-4% of regional GDP, which comes to billions of dollars a year. Given that we’re continually told that Auckland’s not pulling its weight (which is bullshit, given that Auckland’s contribution to the national economy is in line with its size compared to cities overseas), things which reduce congestion are good. The tunnel makes rail more useful, which reduces congestion, which benefits the regional economy and thus the national economy.
Arguing from the position that this is entirely about “wealthy” CBD workers is ignorant, unhelpful, and makes you look like a dick. There are many, many people who work in the CBD who aren’t wealthy, and there are many, many more people who need to travel to the CBD who aren’t workers. Plus, of course, the low-income people living outside the CBD who will travel through it by rail instead of by car to get between employment and residence west and east if the cross-town rail opportunities that the tunnel will present are utilised.
If Puford will benefit Northland so much, why don’t they just pay for it all themselves? And why does the rest of the country suck on Auckland’s road tax tit instead of paying for their own transport infrastructure? You know, since we’re playing the “If it benefits you, you should pay for it directly” game.
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to James Butler,
And successive owners have under-invested in maintenance of NIMT, to the point that a journey that used to take roughly 11 hours by rail or road now takes 9 hours by road and 11-12 hours by rail. Roading's been treated very, very well, rail has not. A lot of that under-investment goes back to the flogging-off of NZR way back when and the consequent financial rape of its assets, and recovering from that will take many years; if it happens at all, given Joyce's proclivities.
What's more concerning is that branch lines are being closed because they're under-used due to their shit condition, which takes away the option of rail delivery of freight right at the moment where road freight is going to start getting incessantly more expensive.
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Yes, we have a narrow-gauge railway. It means that we have to replace at a minimum the full wheel sets of anything we import. It's a hassle, but it's not the end of the world. We also have railway manufacturing plants in Lower Hutt and Dunedin just in case there's a sudden rush of blood to the head of our overlords and they decide that building stuff in NZ might be good for the economy.
On funding, amazingly enough there was a fuel TAX (see what I did there?) for the Auckland region that was going to fund public transport projects. New electric trains, f'rinstance. Or maybe a rail tunnel under the CBD.
But National couldn't be having with Auckland getting power to raise its own money, because that might give the region cohesion and purpose and diminish the death-grip of Wellington's ability to meddle in Auckland's affairs. So pretty much the first thing Steven Joyce did after getting his warrant as Minister of Trucks was abolish the fuel tax, and now Auckland's left begging for money to build infrastructure that'll benefit the entire national economy.Of course, funding is "no challenge" for wasteful motorways to nowhere, such as Puford, possibly because B'linglish is in denial about the effect of rising fuel prices on personal road-based transport.
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Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to giovanni tiso,
1.185 is nearly 1.2 ( is 1.2 to one decimal place), not "a smidgin over 1.1".
And what Josh said. Population of former Auckland, Manukau, Waitakere, North Shore cities, plus the immediately-adjacent populated bits of Papakura, Franklin and Rodney. The 1.4 is right to the borders, which has lots of empty bits in the middle. -
Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Angus, ignoring the digs at real estate values, there're economic benefits to large numbers of people in a small area. Auckland's CBD has an enormous per-employee GDP contribution bonus, making it the highest-value employment location in the country. Decentralisation destroys that value-add.
Also, the tunnel isn't just about bringing people into the CBD it's also about building a proper rail network that can move many more people right across the region. It'll open up cross-town services on the east-west axis, and shorten travel times for people coming from the west into the city.
Like it or not, the CBD is not going away. No matter how much you hate the idea of the tunnel, and the concept of the CBD, you're in a minority and also looking to a future that's dozens of years away if it ever even eventuates. For the foreseeable future, the CBD will remain the region's economic heart and will also remain the heart of tertiary education. University of Auckland has some significant building renewal and expansion projects under way, which means they're not planning on stopping course delivery out of City Campus for a good few years yet. -
Speaker: It's called "planning" for a reason, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
What's depressing is that your hypothesis is entirely plausible. National don't give a toss about those on low incomes, so the increasing cost of living outside the major centres doesn't bother them in the slightest. Sucks to be in Northland, on a benefit that's been slashed to ribbons, having to buy goods that had to come by road from Auckland because the rail line got closed, and paying extra since the Road Transport Forum-member-owned transport firm that brought the goods up gets to charge monopoly rents because there's no competition from those nasty communist trains.