Dredgingport options

AuthorSimon Wilson
Date08 June 2021
Published date08 June 2021
Publication titleNew Zealand Herald, The (Auckland, New Zealand)
There are 875 trucks, going there and back, for each ship. Over the month, that’s 210,000 tonnes of coal and 10,500 truck movements.

Is there anybody who doesn’t see what that does to congestion and traffic safety on the city’s roads? Is there anybody who thinks that’s a good use of the city’s waterfront?

It’s not just coal. The port also handles bulk loads of grain, cement and gypsum, plus the containers and breakbulk cargo, and 250,000 cars and other imported vehicles.

All the cars and most of the rest are carried away, on the motorway through the middle of the city, on an endless stream of trucks.

The wharf is also used as a storage depot for empty containers: If they’re stacked more than three high, like that wall of containers at the bottom of the Strand, they’re empty.

Land use is one of the biggest issues in the debate about the Auckland port. Congestion is another. Carbon emissions is a third.

A hundred years ago, the wharves and the land around them were full of warehouses and factories. The brick Saatchi building in Parnell, for example, was built in 1911 for the Ford Motor Company. But as the land became too valuable, the factories and warehouses moved away.

It’s a natural process in the evolution of cities and transport technology. Commonly, it’s led to the removal of the port itself. With new, purpose-built facilities elsewhere, industry and supply chains operate more efficiently, while city centre land can be repurposed for the public good.

This would almost certainly have happened in Auckland too, if there was an obvious new site for a port. But there isn’t, so for the past 20 years we’ve been arguing about what to do.

A night of debateThat argument came to a head in late 2019, when a Government-commissioned working group presented its Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) report.

Its core proposal — addressing questions of supply-chain efficiency, carbon emissions and road congestion — was that over time most freight should be moved to rail. As part of a greatly expanded rail network, it proposed a new inland port, or freight hub, for Auckland’s northwest, somewhere near Kumeu.

But the UNISCS recommendation that generated the most headlines was the proposal to shift most of the operations of the Auckland port to Northport, at Marsden Pt near Whangārei, with a smaller proportion moved to Tauranga. Cruise ships would remain.

The Government was not thrilled. It asked the Ministry of Transport to review the UNISCS report, and that resulted in another study, by the economic consultancy Sapere.

That one rejected the entire UNISCS report, including the rail focus, and recommended a new port on the Manukau Harbour.

But the UNISCS report is not dead. The working group chairman, Wayne Brown, continues to advocate for it with business groups and others. In the view of members of that working group, the criticisms of the report are parochial, and/or misrepresent their analysis and findings, and/or simply fail to grasp the breadth and depth of the issue.

Who’s right? And what should we do? Almost everyone agrees the port has to move. But where to, when and how, and to achieve what objectives?

At a debate on the future of the port organised last month by the Herald, Auckland mayor Phil Goff said he was “bitterly disappointed” in UNISCS.

“I’ve got to say,” he added, “it’s the worst report I’ve seen in 40 years of politics.”

Why did he say that?

Gary Blick, an economist and one of the authors of the Sapere report, was on the panel, and he provided the critique to back Goff up.

Sitting next to Goff, Minister of Transport Michael Wood did not defend the UNISCS report. But nor did he dismiss it. He didn’t support Goff and nor did he align himself with the previous minister, Phil Twyford, who was openly critical of the Northport plan.

Also on the panel were Shane Vuletich, an economist and a member of the UNISCS working group, and Julie Stout, an architect and the president of Urban Auckland. They had also been members of the year-long Port Future Study, in 2015/16.

Sadly, Ngarimu Blair from Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei was a late withdrawal because of a bereavement.

In the debate, Vuletich and Stout advocated strongly for the UNISCS plan.

They...

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