If Auckland wants a better, modern transport system – and if the rest of the country wants safer roads that kill and
injure fewer people every year – then this will cost money, and all of us will need to make sacrifices to pay for it.
The ‘do nothing’ option went out the window with the previous government. Besides, even National were going to be
raising the fuel excise tax by 10-20 cents a litre in order to pay for their Roads of National Significance. So...any
which way you look at it, fixing up the past nine years of neglect of our transport needs was always going to involve
extra money and some additional hardship. How much? The new draft transport plan unveiled yesterday envisages adding
about 3 to 4 cents a litre each year for the next three years, to the cost of petrol.
The media focus to date has of course, been on the cost involved – rather than on (a) the benefits the new configuration
aims to deliver, and (b) the cost (in lives lost, and productivity gains foregone) of doing nothing at all. Gridlock
already costs Auckland an estimated $1.3 billion a year in lost productivity. Yes, Auckland will bear the brunt of it,
in that it is also facing a regional fuel tax in July, plus this mooted gradual rise in the fuel excise tax which should
start to kick in sometime next year. But hey - Auckland is also where many of the congestion problems (and many of the
resultant gains) are to be located. It is no longer reasonable to expect the rest of New Zealand (in the likes of Hawkes
Bay and Twizel) to prioritise paying for Auckland’s transport bills, while continuing to forego their own roading needs.
That’s the switch that the draft consultative plan envisages. It sets out a compelling argument for a significant shift
of transport resources into regional and rural New Zealand – and away from National’s narrow focus upon a few massively
expensive, high priority roads that are mainly of benefit to those living in metropolitan centres, and which – if
anything – will ultimately add even more cars to the congestion that’s already being experienced. A wider vision that
combines all the relevant elements – road, rail, public transport, rapid transit, cycling – is plainly needed, and with
safety measures being baked into the mix from the very outset.
That shift away National’s roads of national significance – which have been eating up 40 % of the entire transport spend
for roads that carry only 4% of the nation’s cars and trucks – is also politically significant. Having harvested votes
from the regions at every election, National has proceeded to starve provincial New Zealand of their roading (and
related road safety needs) between elections. As Transport Minister Phil Twyford pointed out yesterday :
Over the nine years of the last National Government’s transport spending, spending through the National Land Transport
Programme reduced in the West Coast, Taranaki, Southland, Otago, Northland, Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, and the Bay of
Plenty….
As Twyford went on to explain, those reductions will now be addressed :
Instead of hand-picked, low-value, and very expensive urban motorway projects, this Government will double the spending
on regional road improvements over the next three years. Half of all vehicle journeys are on local roads, and yet less
than only 5 percent of the National Land Transport Programme has been spent on improving them. In order to fund its pet
projects, National starved local and regional roads. Spending on local roads only increased by $6 million across the
nine years of the last Government. By comparison, the last Labour Government tripled the amount of funding over their
nine years. This….Government policy statement, increases local road improvements by 43 percent over the decade.
Besides this regional shift, the main components of the draft plan involve a spending emphasis on (a) promoting safety
across the country’s road networks for motorists and cyclists alike (b) enhancing public transport and (c) creating
rapid transit systems within the main centres, including Wellington and Christchurch.
Safety First
The safety situation on our roads is deteriorating, not improving. As was pointed out at yesterday’s post -Cabinet press
conference, our fatality rate per billion kilometres travelled has risen 16 percent between 2013 and 2016. Meaning : the
number of fatalities and serious injuries are increasing at a faster rate than can be explained by simple traffic
growth. This trend has to be confronted, if only because the option of doing nothing at all would carry a body count.
Twyford, again :
Early work by the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Ministry of Transport suggests that there may be around $800
million worth of high-value road safety improvements in need of funding on local roads alone. It’s estimated that once
complete these improvements could prevent 160 deaths and serious injuries per year…
The reality is that local and regional roads – not super highways – pose our most dangerous safety risks, to locals and
tourists alike. Fortunately, the cost/benefits of shifting the available resources into improving the safety of those
rural/provincial roads and state highways are striking. As the Greens Associate Transport Minister Julie-Anne Genter
pointed out yesterday :
To put it in perspective—and this is just an example—for half the cost of the East-West Link motorway project, which is
only really a few kilometres long, we could afford median safety barriers down the middle of every kilometre of State
highway in the country—that’s just for half the cost. So by rebalancing the transport budget we can achieve far greater
outcomes, and we can save lives.
Of course, under this policy, the Government is proposing to invest $1.5 billion in regional and local roads over the
next three years, because that’s where the vast majority of car and truck travel is, and all of our top most dangerous
roads are actually local roads, not State highways. So under this policy, you can expect to see more median barriers,
safe passing lanes, rumble strips, intersection upgrades, and all of that will make a real difference to the road toll.
The rationale for the plan laid out by PM Jacinda Arden, and Cabinet Ministers Shane Jones, Phil Twyford and Julie Anne
Genter at the 3 April post-Cabinet press conference is worth reading, and is available here.
Yes, there will be extra costs. And to repeat: motorists would have been facing boosts in the costs per litre of petrol
at the pump, regardless of who had won the last election. The difference being…under National, they would have been
getting less in return, especially if they lived in the provinces that have faithfully voted for National year in,
decade out:
Finally, on petrol excise and road-user charges—the two main sources of funds for the National Land Transport Fund—what
this Government did not know when we took office, and what the previous Government did not disclose is that the New
Zealand Transport Agency had advised Simon Bridges, the former transport Minister, that the petrol excise and road-user
charges needed to increase to just pay for the previous Government’s promises on a few hand-picked expressways—was
needed in order to, in the scale of 10c to 20c per litre, to increase just to continue spending on those projects. We’ve
chosen to limit the increases on petrol excise and road-user charges to the lowest end of Simon Bridges’ range.
Roading, Sexy
In essence, the previous government’s transport policy could have been designed in North Korea, by Kim Jong- Un.
Meaning: money got poured into a few showpiece roads in the nation’s capital, while the people in the regions have been
starved. Yet in selling the draft transport package…the problem for the current government is that improving the
country’s road transport system ( and saving lives in the process) just doesn’t seem like a very sexy package to the
corporate media Fortunately though, I’m told that country music is still popular in the regions that stand to benefit
the most….and of late, Nashville has taken a fairly risqué approach to the risks of driving on the nation’s back roads.
To that end, maybe the NZLTA can make some promotional use of this country mega-hit from early last year:
Mind you, walking down the middle of the road in the way that the Haim sisters do here is empowering as all heck, but is
not to be recommended on safety grounds :