The wild swings in transport policy on a daily basis continue to happen, with a national fuel tax of 6c a litre (introduced over the next two years) taking the place of the 9.5c a litre regional fuel tax that was to be imposed in Auckland. Furthermore, it appears as though the national fuel tax won’t actually even be paying for the new electric trains, but rather that KiwiRail will be dumped with the train debt, while all the new fuel tax money will go to where National reckons transport money should always go – rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroads of course!

The various press releases on the issue make somewhat disturbing reading, when looked at in detail. It is clear that the National government does not particularly value public transport, and considers that because most people currently use roads, the vast majority of funding should go to new roads – regardless of whether that’s a sustainable transport strategy moving into the future. In a way, it’s a shame that oil prices have decreased so much in the last few months, and that petrol is no longer at record levels, as I suspect in such an environment anyone proposing the continued long-term domination of transport by the private vehicle would be simply laughed at (that is, unless they were coming up with some serious electric car proposals). Unfortunately, our politicians are too short-sighted to realise that the huge decrease in oil prices is most likely to only be temporary (and strongly linked to the recession). Once the global world economy recovers (whenever that may be), oil prices will skyrocket once again, and possibly even more severely than last time – due to a suspension in investment over the past few months. On the bright side, I guess we’ll have a lot of empty roads to drive along (while paying $5 a litre for petrol).

Leaving aside the broad political/ideological stupidity of the National government’s transport policies, there are clearly some gains and some losses out of what has happened in the past few days. Let’s look at the gains first:

  1. Auckland will be getting electric trains. Although this isn’t really a “gain” from the previous situation, there was a worry that we’d end up with nothing at all.
  2. The national funding of Auckland’s trains will mean that we are not disadvantaged in comparison to Wellington. Wellington currently is getting a pile of new electric trains manufactured, which the government fully funded.
  3. With KiwiRail owning all the trains on Auckland’s suburban network, there is potential in the future for a smaller number of players to be involved in the train network. This should help things.
  4. It looks like the Victoria Park Tunnel might be built sooner. This is perhaps the ONE Auckland motorway project that I wholeheartedly support.

And now for the losses:

  1. The big one is integrated ticketing. Although a “cheap” paper-based ticketing system is likely to still go ahead at the end of this year, the smart-card contract (which was about to be let) is likely to be delayed as the ARC scrabbles together its begging hat and goes to the government for general funds to help out with the $100 million price tag.
  2. Station upgrades. We might end up with a half-built Newmarket station unless money is found immediately to complete it.
  3. Wharf upgrades. Once again this was meant to be funded by the regional petrol tax – likely to be delayed until general transport funds can be found.
  4. Electrification is likely to be delayed. KiwiRail and ARTA/ARC don’t really seem to agree with each other on much, so it’s unlikely that KiwiRail will want exactly the same trains that ARTA/ARC had tendered for. This will delay the trains by at least 6 months I would imagine, meaning that we definitely won’t have new electric trains by the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
  5. The ARC is severely weakened in terms of the power it has over transportation in Auckland. As I trust the ARC a lot more than central government (one actually wants to improve the train network, the other loves roads and has only continued with electrification because it had to) this is a big negative.
  6. Money will be redirected away from sustainable transportation (walking, cycling & public transport) and towards building more State Highways. This will just further entrench Auckland (and New Zealand’s) auto dependency and make us even more susceptible to the effects of peak oil.

So, while the outcome could be worse, public transport in Auckland is definitely left the poorer as a result of what’s happened in the last few days. If the smart-card issue can be sorted out, I will feel a lot better about things, but overall it is highly depressing to have the government being so obsessed with roading projects in the future.

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