The Greens have announced a plan to reduce traffic congestion in Auckland: free public transport for school students. Its not as crazy an idea as it sounds. Here in Palmerston North, they have free bus travel for tertiary students - and with a quarter of the city travelling over the bridge to Massey or the CRIs every morning, it has made a tremendous difference. There is still congestion, but noticeably less of it. And as a bonus, it has improved bus services generally, at least in terms of the size and quality of the vehicles.
Would the same happen in Auckland? I think it is at least worth investigating. And the cost - $25 to $50 million depending on demand - is relatively low. It's certainly far lower than the couple of billion cost of the Waterview extension, and than the estimated $900 million a year cost of bad traffic flow to the Auckland economy it is supposed to solve (I take that figures with a grain of salt, given that it seems to assume that the extra trip time would be spent working, rather than sleeping in in the morning, but the important thing is that transport planners believe it). A couple of year pilot programme would be a significant funding decision, but small compared to the billions they have already wasted on concrete. It should be a priority for the government in the next budget.
(Meanwhile, I'd like to see other cities experimenting with this sort of policy as well. unfortunately, thanks to the government's canning of regional fuel taxes, they no longer have the dedicated money to fund it).
