Discursive Barriers to Sustainable Transport in New Zealand Cities.

The provision of sustainable transport remains a high priority in the New Zealand cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. However, the lack of real progress in developing sustainable transport systems in these cities demands a search for new insights. This article investigates barriers to sustainable urban transport by applying the concept of discursive path dependence to the way in which policymakers conceive and address problems in an institutional context. The discursive barriers are investigated through the identification of ‘storylines’ from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch transport and planning documents dating from the mid-1950s until late 2012. Economic, mobility, safety, consumer, funding and environment storylines show a developmental bias towards roads as compared to sustainable transport. The influence of storylines is discussed at political, institutional and social levels to provide greater understanding of the shaping of policy discourses. This article concludes that discourse constructed in the past, but continuously reiterated, has created a path dependency which is a barrier to sustainable transport in all three cities. The application of path dependence shows that once a road-based policy path has been taken, discourse strengthens that path and helps actors to consistently ignore the need for sustainable transport and obstruct change in policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]