Auckland mayor Wayne Brown during a transport announcement on 3 December 2024. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Auckland's mayor has doubled down on gaining control over transport planning decisions for the supercity, following announced alterations to Auckland Transport.
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and mayor Wayne Brown announced the plan to strip Auckland Transport of its decision making powers to focus on delivering public transport services.
A new Auckland Regional Transport Committee would make policy and planning decisions instead. The alterations to AT require legislative changes over the next 12 months.
Wayne Brown told Nine to Noon that the shift will change the "culture of independence" at AT, where they were "not listening" to elected councillors.
When asked whether "not listening to council" could be a response to AT being anti-car, and whether the shake up had implications for Auckland's public transport developments, Brown said it's "not as simple".
"People want nice simple answers to complicated questions, it will have an impact on all of those things. There's been the ability in AT to shurg off concerns from elected officials about some of their policies."
Brown said he believed there would be lots of changes after the shake-up at AT.
"Temporary traffic management, which is the orange cones that I loathe, we've made no progress on that, despite the fact that it's well known that I think we've spent far too much money on that. Not just speed humps, just the general policy of how we do design and build roads."
Brown said he had lots of knowledge and experience about roads.
"Roads are something I know about, I've designed roads, built roads, owned roads and sold roads, and not many people can say that."
The draft regional transport plan would now be "dragged into the influence of elected officials", Brown said.
When asked whether the changes would mean the central government's share of power over Auckland's transport decisions will increase, Brown said "the government and ratepayers jointly fund most things transport, so having a good share of that is pretty good".
He said the appointment of the chair of the Auckland Regional Transport Committee will be "equal" between him and minister Simeon Brown.
On the topic of the future of Auckland's other Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs), Brown said councillors had different views on the issue.
The mayor said he believed there were unnecessary overlaps in the work being done by the council and CCOs.
He raised the example of multiple agencies such as Eke Panuku, Tātaki Auckland and council overlapping on its work in organising.
Brown said the futures of CCOs are "yet to be determined".
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