12 June 2013

[statement from David Thornton]

Mayor’s Transport Plan under attack from all sides.

Rethink needed before new rates put in place.

The storm is gathering over the future of Auckland’s transport systems – and maybe over the Council itself.

The Minister of Transport, and the Auckland Business Forum have told the Mayor Len Brown that his council’s plan for addressing Auckland’s transport plan will not provide either solutions to congestion, nor encourage significant increases in the use of public transport.

And ratepayers are telling the Mayor he cannot go on with ever-increasing rate increases – 9.5% average next year for residential ratepayers.

There are even rumblings that the Government will take transport out of the Council’s control – as it is doing with addressing the issues around housing issues. .

There is a crying need for a host of transport projects all around the city which together are designed to deliver significant improvements in the movement of people and freight.
Indeed those projects are what the new Transport Levy is intended to fund.

But one big project, the key to delivering the Mayors’s vision in the Auckland Plan, is the Central Rail Link which is being allocated 60% or more of the transport budget – in particular, more than $400 million in the next three years.

That is more than the new Targeted Transport Rate will provide over the next three years.

The plain truth is that the CRL is Mayor Brown’s vanity project. He wants it – and he wants it NOW.

But the Minister and the business community have told the Mayor his Plan, which has the CRL at its heart, will not meet Auckland’s future transport needs.

The truth is that the CRL project will not solve Auckland’s congestion problems over the next 30 years.

Which is the message be drawn from the statements by the Minister and the business community in the last few days.

As for Britomart, of course the station could be improved by eventually becoming a through station as opposed to a terminal.

To protect that future opportunity all that is needed is the laying of two tunnels under the neighbouring Precinct Property building when its construction commences.

That would at most cost $30 million as opposed to the almost half billion the Council is proposing to spend on what is effectively the first stage of the CRL – euphemistically called ‘enabling works’.

These ‘enabling works’ involve ripping up half of the Auckland CBD to Wyndam Street, with consequent huge disruption costs, to start building a $2.8 billion project where the balance of finding needed has not been found, and for which all of the proposed funding options have been ruled out – leaving council rates as the sole funding source.

In the light of the statements by the Minister and the business community, the Council, working with Auckland Transport, should now urgently review its 10-year budget before the rates are set on 25th June.

Unless the Council accepts the need for review and changes to its Transport Plan, including delaying the CRL, the Government, as the major source of transport funding in this city, should step in and overrule the Council on all transport issues.

Ends

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