Genter Julie Anne: General Debate 
Genter Julie Anne: General Debate 
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JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena koutou e te Whare. Today I would like to talk about the importance of transport to New Zealand’s economy and particularly the importance of cost-effective evidence-based transport investment.  
Right now we have an opportunity to solve our transport problems in a way that is going to cost us less money. It is going to help us. It is an opportunity to address the housing affordability crisis in Auckland. It is an opportunity to improve our health and our well-being. It is an opportunity to enable households and businesses to have more money to spend in the domestic economy. I know that this sounds too good to be true—that we can be increasing the choices for all New Zealanders and how they get around by spending less money and changing our current paradigm around transport planning—but it is true. 
 I am sure many members of this House take it for granted that the traffic engineers at the New Zealand Transport Agency or the policy advisers at the Ministry of Transport know what they are talking about when they come to us with their forecasts for traffic growth. But the reality is that the world is changing and a lot of the assumptions that have been used in these traffic modelling and business case scenarios are flawed and we have the opportunity to do things differently. 
I think ordinary New Zealanders are largely aware of this. Widening roads and increasing motorway capacity on the fringe of the city does not address our congestion problems. It does not save people money in the long term because when you make it cheaper and easier to drive at peak hour more people will choose to drive at peak hour. This will make it harder for people to walk to cycle and to take public transport. It actually undermines our investment in buses and trains if we are expanding motorway capacity without fixing the market distortions that are underlying our current transportation system. 
So this traditional approach to traffic engineering has a number of very costly unintended consequences. I have already talked about some of them. It makes it harder for people to walk to cycle and to take public transport even though these are clearly more cost-effective ways for people to move around our towns and cities at peak hour. If members stop and think about it I am sure that will make sense to them. I mean think about it. Cars take up a whole lot of land. They take up a lot of room. They are not the most efficient way of moving large numbers of people around our areas. That does not mean they are bad. There is nothing evil or wrong with cars; it is just that they are not the most cost-effective way for people to move around our towns and cities at peak hour. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: What happened to personal choice? 
JULIE ANNE GENTER 
: Yes that is exactly it. I think the Green Party understands that we do need to increase people’s personal choices. 
The problem is—and I know members are not experts in transport engineering so they are not aware of these flawed assumptions in the traffic engineering models—but the reality is that the traditional traffic engineering approach has undermined people’s choices because it makes it seem cheaper and easier to drive at peak hour. So it is totally understandable that most New Zealanders drive to work because they do not have any other option. That is nobody’s fault. It does not need to be something ideological. We just need to look at why things have happened the way they have and come up with some evidence-based cost-effective solutions. I am sure that the National Party should support evidence-based cost-effective solutions that are going to be good for the economy. 
A concrete example of how motorways are not the most cost-effective way to deal with congestion is clear in the Northern Busway. So the busway right now is nowhere near capacity but it is currently carrying the equivalent of four lanes of traffic over the Waitemata Harbour at peak hour. How much would it cost to put an additional four lanes on the harbour bridge? How much do you think that would cost? It would cost a lot more than the Northern Busway costs. And how much would it cost to provide all that parking in and around central Auckland for the tens of thousands of vehicles if people were forced to drive into the city because we had not invested in the Northern Busway? 
So this demonstrates what an incredible opportunity we have to spend less money and move more people and give people more choices. The people who want to drive and the freight that needs to move at peak hour on trucks are actually going to pay less and they are going to find it easier to get where they need to go at peak hour if we just implement a smart green transport policy and I am very happy to work with the Government on this. Thank you.