Bizarre Herald Article

Today there was a truly bizarre article on transport in the NZ Herald. Well, the article itself wasn’t that strange – largely bemoaning the government’s stupidity in forcing Auckland to adopt its roads building fetish, even though a lot of work has been done by councils to determine that people actually want better public transport a lot more than they want more roads.

But anyway, what is truly strange about this article is its title: “More money to complete rail stations, says Joyce.” Finding a herald article with that title got me quite optimistic and excited – until I actually read the article:

Key Auckland rail station projects will be completed despite an estimate that roading will account for three-quarters of funding, the Government has said.Auckland Regional Council officers have estimated that a new Government policy statement on transport funding will require 76 per cent of money to be spent on roads.

This compares with 68 per cent under Labour policy last year and a target of 64 per cent in Auckland’s 10-year strategy formed by the region’s councils in 2004.

So that’s a pretty depressing note for it to begin on. Basically, it seems like the regional allocation of transport funds within the Auckland region will have to become EVEN MORE roads-oriented than it is at the moment. Last month I slammed ARTA at their hearing on the Auckland Transport Plan for making it far too roads-centric, and that it completely contradicted  the most recent Regional Land Transport Strategy, which specifically states that “business as usual cannot continue” with regards to  roading monopolising transport funding. Not only is the government completely contradicting this, by proposing “business as usual” they are actually going even further than this, stating that we’re spending too much on public transport and not enough on roads – and that it’s time to address this imbalance. It makes one want to pull their hair out in frustration – to put things mildly.

The article goes on:

Regional transport committee chairwoman Christine Rose said the calculation raised serious questions about public transport funding at a time of unprecedented demand and in the face of a potential $200 million shortfall for projects such as railway stations and ferry terminals, after the Government cancelled a new regional fuel tax to pay for those.”It means for us a total reversal of the autonomy and balance we had been trying to achieve through the regional land transport strategy,” she said.

That strategy had earmarked 32 per cent of funding for public transport and 4 per cent for travel demand management, which includes school and business travel planning as well as walking and cycling facilities.

Ms Rose acknowledged the upper limit of spending on public transport infrastructure for the next three years had increased from a March draft sum of $210 million to $300 million.

However, the Government could spend as little as $60 million under its own plans.

Ms Rose said the Transport Agency had advised the regional council to expect allocations at the “very low” end of the spectrum.

So I’m still waiting for  Steven Joyce saying that more money’s available for the funding of railway stations, as claimed in the article’s title. In fact it actually seems like in all likeliness there will be far LESS money available for stuff like building railway stations. Just remember, the Regional Fuel Tax would have paid for all this stuff.

And petrol went up by 4c a litre. That would have just about paid for our electric trains – yet nobody noticed.

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