Thursday 18 June 2009

The oxymoron that is local government transport planning

Proponents of Rodney Hide's template for Auckland's mega-council insists it's absolutely necessary to amalgmate Auckland's six council into one in order to "integrate city planning."

Which is to say, to integrate "planning" by council planners (while, incidentally, making private planning more difficult).

Which is to say, to give more power to morons like this one, Mr Chris Darby, North Shore City's representative on the Regional Transport Committee, to make your life more difficult and his ego more shiny.

Why do I call him a moron? Because Mr Darby is a tranport planner who doesn't like roads. Worse, he's an Auckland transport planner who doesn' t like roads. Even though 86% of commutes in Auckland are undertaken by car, and only 7% by public transport (and of those more than half are by buses, which use those same roads) Mr Darby, North Shore transport planner objects to 76% of Auckland transport funding going on roads.

"An absolute time warp to the 1950s" this moron calls that decision. "It fails to provide against dwindling oil supplies," he says. "It will be a long-time liability," he insists.

Why do we want to give morons like this any power at all, let alone more? As Liberty Scott says, in giving this rate-paid liability a thorough fisking, "Mr Darby is another commodity speculator who doesn't actually risk his own money on the assertion that oil prices will go sky high. . . Why should he have any say at all? He doesn't represent users, he doesn't represent producers, he represents planners."

And central "planners" are the lowest of the low. We don't want their kind of planning "integrated," we need it abolished.

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