Welcome Bay from across the estuary. Taken from state highway 29A.
I was at a candidates evening in Welcome Bay on Wednesday 12th of June. One of the topics that came up was that Welcome Bay has problems with traffic congestion, and no supermarket. There are historic and economic reasons for that, and the same issues have affected many parts of Tauranga and the Bay. In fact many parts of New Zealand are affected, so it is not just a local problem.
Some History
Prior to amalgamating with the Mount, Tauranga was a harbour city. Tauranga is geographically constrained by the harbour and the various estuaries, both for available land, and for roads. While Tauranga was small, there were strips of housing along the harbour all the way up to Waihi Beach. There were many small settlements with maybe a local store, and some of them even had a petrol station.
Omokoroa, TePuna, Bethlehem, Matua, Otumoetai, Maungatapu, Welcome Bay and other areas all had strips of harbourside housing. Usually a mix of retirees, holiday baches and a few people who worked locally. In those days people did not drive very far to go to work.
When I grew up in Otumoetai, there was a citrus orchard on one side of the house, tomato greenhouses on another side of the house, and carnation greenhouses across the road. Mrs Pillans was still alive, and lived in the old white house at the bottom of Pillans road. Mr Maxwell lived in the Mission House on Mission street. He was a great big tall man with a gruff voice. He had been a bushman and had a huge big blue chainsaw. We boys thought he was great. Matua was mainly citrus orchards. Tauranga was one of the main citrus growing areas in New Zealand. We had the citrus festival every year down Cameron road. The citrus queen was the star of the parade.
Before the Maungatapu bridge was built, Welcome Bay road was the main road east from Tauranga. Welcome Bay grew up as a strip of houses beside the harbour on both sides of the main road. Originally the road would have been dirt, then gravel, and now today it is tarseal. To travel to the Mount from Tauranga meant driving all the way out to Kairua road, and then back to the Mount. On the original dirt roads that would have taken hours. My mother grew up in Te Puna. When she was a little girl, the quickest way to the Mount from Te Puna was by boat.
Welcome Bay In The 1970’s
I remember the original local store which is still there, the Welcome Bay food market. During the school holidays, I worked on a dairy farm in Welcome bay, on the area from Owens Park to Ranganui Road. I have walked or tractored over all of that area as a teenager. All of that land is now housing. From memory, the housing was originally built as state housing.
Welcome Bay has grown since then. It was popular because it was close to the harbour, close to Tauranga city, and the houses were cheaper than in Tauranga. From memory, the Welcome Bay hall was already there, but new shops were built, and from memory the primary school was also built about that time. I don’t remember the primary school being there when I was working on the farm, but my memory is not always correct. More houses were built up James Cook drive, and down towards Tyre Park.
There were more houses, but Welcome Bay grew as a dormitory suburb, with only a few small shops, and no commercial or light industrial areas. So there were no doctors, no car mechanics, no supermarkets etc. Most people drove into Tauranga for their big grocery shop, for other shopping, for the doctor, or to get their car serviced etc. More and more people worked in Tauranga, so they commuted every day.
Urban Planning
For most of human history, people have built houses around commerce. In other words people lived close to where they worked, and then shops and facilities followed. In modern times in New Zealand and other western countries, urban planners have deliberately created dormitory suburbs which are removed from where people work, and usually also removed from where people shop and play. This has enabled the great urban sprawl. The result is that people have to drive to work, drive to go shopping, drive to restaurants, and drive to everywhere, instead of having these things close to where they live. People are forced to have a car. The result is a lack of local facilities, and traffic congestion. Does that sound familiar for Welcome Bay? The same story repeats all over New Zealand.
A counter to this has developed overseas, the so-called fifteen minute cities. The basic idea is that you should be able to live, work, learn and play within a fifteen minute travel radius. That seems sensible to me, but there is huge opposition to the idea in some places. Some people see it as a big brother invasion, on the basis that it would be mandated that you can only travel within your fifteen minute area. That is an argument for another day.
My view is that it seems sensible to group living, work, learning and play close together, and I think a lot of people are starting to agree. The trouble is that we are stuck with our dormitory suburbs, and it is not clear how you can change that. Do we knock down houses for commercial and industrial zones? Primary schools are already close to where we live, but do we knock down houses to build more colleges? None of those options would be cheap, or easy. We also have the economic effects caused by easy travel (see below).
Urban planning was intended to help create more livable cities, but here we have a situation where urban planning has made our cities less livable in unintended ways.
Lets Build More Roads
Traffic congestion from Welcome Bay is a problem. The answer is obvious, build more roads. But here we have the law of unintended consequences. The worldwide experience is that building more roads tends to make traffic congestion worse, rather than better. Why is that?
The problem is that building more roads and making travel easier encourages jobs, shops and other services to concentrate in fewer areas. An example of this is the tendency for office jobs to concentrate in the CBD. If people can travel easily there will be fewer, but larger shops and shopping centers, instead of many smaller shops. There will be concentrations of fewer but larger commercial and industrial areas etc. This is the result of economics. It is more profitable for business to have fewer and larger premises. This also tends to drive the small businesses out, in favour of large business. So the result of more roads is usually but not always more traffic and more congestion.
In my opinion, we are too reliant on cars and easy travel, but that is unlikely to change unless global events outside New Zealand force us to change.
Lets Build A Local Supermarket
We need a supermarket in Welcome Bay. The answer is obvious, lets get the big supermarkets to build one. The problem is economics. The big supermarkets are ruthless about turnover and profits. It costs tens of millions of dollars to setup a supermarket, and tens of millions of dollars a year to run it. It has to be profitable otherwise the supermarkets are not interested. Even if you offer free land, the cost of the land is insignificant compared to the other costs.
One of the problems for Welcome Bay is that most residents drive to Tauranga every day to work. The reality is that if it is cheaper and or more convenient to shop in Tauranga on the way home, they will shop in Tauranga. Even if there is a supermarket in Welcome Bay, people will still need to go to Tauranga for other types of shops (eg Kmart or the Warehouse). People like to combine their shopping trips so if they are going to Fraser Cove to visit the Warehouse, they will probably also visit the supermarket at the same time.
The supermarkets understand this very well. They will only build a supermarket in Welcome Bay if they believe that it will make money. To be viable, there would probably need to be enough retail traffic to justify a group of large shops, not just a supermarket on its own. Shops tend to group together because that helps attract shoppers. That is why we have malls and large shopping centers (for example Bayfair, Palm Beach Plaza, the Lakes, Gate Pa, Fraser Cove etc). This is a consequence of people being able to travel easily (see above).
As an example, if you drive to Te Puke you will see that many of the small shops have disappeared because so many people in Te Puke do their shopping in Tauranga. Small towns close to larger cities tend to lose their shops and other services to the larger city. Even the local hospital has been closed because most people can drive to Tauranga. It is cheaper to run one large hospital than lots of smaller ones. Similarly, there used to be local stores in all the suburbs. They have mostly all gone now, because people prefer to drive to the supermarket.
So What Do We Do
I am sorry if i sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas. It was all supposed to be so easy. The funny thing about life is that most things are never as easy as they seem.
So should council spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to solve the problem? I would think very carefully before going down that road. It is not likely to succeed because you are fighting against human nature and the laws of economics.
What is more likely is that council can take small steps which will ease the problems. For example, buses can take some traffic off the roads. A small supermarket might be viable, but that is best left to to the supermarkets to decide. They understand the economics far better than council.
One way to help the economics of a supermarket in Welcome Bay might be to close the roads so that the locals are forced to shop in Welcome Bay. That would also solve traffic congestion, but would create other problems (like angry locals). Mind you, the council is having a go at closing the road at the moment, maybe as a trial.
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