Institutional change, path dependence and public transport planning in Auckland: Findings of a research project by Imran Muhammad

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This research investigates the contradictions and uncertainties that have characterised transport planning in Auckland to answer fundamental questions concerning how a smooth institutional transformation towards sustainable transport can be achieved. The research finds that Auckland’s dependence on cars is the product of path-dependent pro-road policies extending back to the 1950s. Fuelled by neo-liberal, free-market ideology, Auckland has aggressively pursued motorway-led development. 

This has not only created car-oriented norms, values and beliefs, but also established formidable political and institutional barriers, as evidenced by inequitable funding allocation, biased technical rationality, shallow consultation processes and the economic efficiency rhetoric often invoked by the government to justify road projects in preference to public transport.