Kate Hawkesby: Auckland Transport won't rest until all carparks are gone

One of the things that's irked me this week - apart from Will Smith - (who I'm still irked by, by the way), but the other thing annoying me, is Auckland Transport.  I mean I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at the lengths they'll go to, to get us out of our cars.. and actually if you think this is just an Auckland thing, think again. The anti-car brigade is coming to a road near you any day now. It’s top down, driven by idealogues inside the Government and includes advocates like Julie Anne Genter who would have us all on bikes by now if she could.  The latest car bashing going on is to strip away all the parking. Not just the regular amount of parking they’ve already stripped away, oh no, that was just an appetiser.  They won’t rest until ALL parking is stripped away. That includes parking on the road right outside your house. And what, you may ask, will they do with all that empty space where cars were once allowed to park? More bike and bus lanes of course!  Here’s the thing no one seems to want to admit – we are not a country of public transport users. We are not London, we are not Melbourne. We do not have our homes perched on main line stations and accessible through roads, we do not have thriving city centres heaving with people all eager to get on a bus.  What we have, particularly in Auckland, is far-flung suburbs, people who commute all over the place – they might live on the North Shore, work in West Auckland, and have kids at school in the Eastern suburbs. The after-school sport may be somewhere else. We are families with bags and gear and equipment and things that need to be carried in something more robust than a bike basket.  We live and work on routes where buses don’t come, so we would have to walk in all weathers to all manner of places after the bus stops miles from where we need to be. Our CBDs are shadows of their former selves – they are crime-filled dens of inequity and empty shops with 'for lease' signs. Homeless have set up camp, retailers have left. They’re not places we want our kids hanging around all hours to wait for a bus that may or may not turn up.  What I’m saying is, we are not a country geared up for this, we are not compact, and we love our cars. And let’s break this down in terms of the metrics they’re actually planning. 240 kilometres of road, taken back, taken off us, and our cars, and given to buses and bikes. That’s very roughly 48,000 cars, and if you recycle that car park 4 to 5 times a day, that’s roughly 200-250,000 cars swept off the road.  Public submissions on this plan start tomorrow and are open for a month. Can you believe initially they were going to do this WITHOUT any public submissions? The arrogance of that. So they’ll “consult” which we know is code for “let you speak”. Will they listen though? Do they really care? Or will it all just get railroaded.. excuse the pun..  through? If they do get their way, then I hope they’ve crunched the numbers on how much more productive movement they’re gaining. Because all I know from retailers is that when you take away the car parks, you take away the business.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.