Interesting question by Green MP Gareth Hughes to Steven Joyce in parliament today about the economic justifications of the Roads of National Significance (RoNS):
Good to see this kind of debate happening in parliament. I’m quite impressed by Mr Hughes.
The OECD report being referred to in the questions and answers is here, and I have previously blogged about it here. Overall, I must say I’m not quite sure how Mr Joyce says that the study supports the notion that building motorways generates economic growth. My (somewhat untrained admittedly) reading of the tables which support the report says quite the opposite.
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So revealling that he goes straight for the hypocated (sp?) argument, it shows his thinking so clearly, those taxes come from motorists so it doesn’t matter that the country is losing $240 million dollars a week or that it isn’t the best way to spend limited transport funds, the motorists give the taxes so we must build more roads..!
Sigh, we should be finishing Puhoi just in time for the 20% estimated declines in traffic from peak cheap oil…
One would think it’s not too hard to understand that road users benefit from investment in public transport, so therefore it makes perfect sense to use fuel tax dollars on PT.
In Britain there is FOUR TIMES the amount of petrol tax collected than is spent on the roading system. I’m not sure where the other 75% goes, but I imagine a fair chunk of it goes on funding public transport.
NZ and the US are the only two first world countries with a hypocated fuel taxation system, the UK’s surplus likely goes into the general coffers and road improvements may have to compete with health and education spending just like rail does here (not sure about this though)…
Hahaha, Joyce got owned again.
I actually roared out laughing when he suggested Auckland as an example of where motorways have eased congestion.
Perhaps he needs to come to my place, walk the 300m to Symond St bridge and look at the CMJ between 6am – 9:30am and 2pm – 6pm every week day.
The man just seems completely out of touch.
I reckon….. Auckland’s probably the last city in the world you’d want to quote as a good example of “building motorways fixes congestion”.
What are the most congested sections of motorway in Auckland? What are the widest sections of motorway in Auckland? Why is it that these two seem to align quite well?
He does seem very smug with himself when answering those questions.
To Jeremy and Admin, some rough numbers on British land transport expenditure. Road user taxation (petrol diesel, vehicle registration) collects about £30 bn every year. Against that can be offset:
* £5 bn a year to support the railway
* £9 bn a year on the road network (roughly, including Scotland)
* £3 bn a year on bus services (roughly, including Scotland).
So, about £17 bn per year, not including assistance for local roading. There’s no sense of tieing money from one particular source to expenditure on a particular area. Actually, having seen the British arrangements, and how untidy they are, hypothecated taxation has a lot going for it, and is one of the strengths of the New Zealand arrangements.
The problem is not the use of a fund, the problem is where the money gets spent, and I have already observed that if the Puhoi Highway project was analysed in rigorous economic terms, it would not stack up. The money could be spent to far greater benefit elsewhere in the road network.
Ross, I think the key is to see the transport network as a whole. If you get greater benefits (often to road users) from building a public transport project such as the CBD rail tunnel than you would get from building a motorway like the Holiday Highway, then to me it seems rather stupid that we’d spend our money on the less viable option – simply because it’s a road.
I pay petrol tax when I drive around on weekends and I am more than happy for that money to be spent on improving the public transport network to cater for the times when I use the bus. If hypothecation meant “transport money gets spent on transport” I wouldn’t have anywhere near as much of a problem as I have with the non-sensical “road money gets spent on roads” ideology.
Just to clarify, I don’t have any problem with the “transport money gets spent on transport” view. In New Zealand we’ve been using road funds to support public transport operations for quite some time; but as we both know, what we need is a *change in regime* which means that road user funds could be used to support big capital projects like the CBD railway tunnel. That’s the big win.
It does seem rather odd to be OK using NLTF money (road funds) for PT subsidies but not for PT capital works such as the CBD rail tunnel.
@Matt L – it’s weird how smug he appears, it’s almost as though he knows that what he’s saying is laughable but that it doesn’t matter because he’s getting his holiday highway.
Yes, the bit about Auckland being a great example of congestion relief was fantastic. Am looking for some good stats about that.
It’s also kind of funny because when you look at traffic stats on the motorways in Auckland (or, indeed NZ) you can see they plataued in 2008 and took a sharp dip downwards in 2009. Obviously this would have relieved congestion.
There are some obvious reasons for the drop in traffic (high petrol prices, that recession thing) but it’s hard to believe that the massive motorway building programme which Joyce instigated in December, 2008 has really done much for congestion relief yet.
@LucyJH Well the comedy festival is in town. I assume that he is just trying to get a gig somewhere.
How about some fuel tax money going into the general account to make a little headway offsetting the cost of policing the road network and in particular funding the health system that takes care of the victims of road trauma and vehicular pollution?
Nick, as far as I know NZTA does reimburse the police for their road policing.
Yes, funding for the traffic police is directed through NZTA:
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/planning/what-funding/nltp.html
Not, however, health costs.
It’s a big chunk isn’t it..? Like $200 – $300 million out the billion the Police get..?
Well I would hate to think what the health bill was, simply enormous. I saw one Australian estimate of the costs of road trauma at $18 billion a year, if we scale that back to NZs population it would be maybe $3-4 billion each year.
Road trauma is a massive problem for society and it kinda gets ignored to an extent. People think car accidents are just ‘accidents’ and a fact of life, they don’t realise they are a direct consequence of a road based transport system.
It’s good to see someone asking the right questions here. Gareth Hughes has an excellent grip on this issue, he’s doing a much better job than anything we’ve seen from Darren Hughes so far.
It’s very apparent that Joyce’s fixation on building motorways is based on nothing more than blind faith alone. When confronted with evidence that some of his RONS are not ecomincally viable or that overseas evidence suggests that building roads alone will not create the economic growth he asserts it will he just seems to shrug his shoulders, his attitude is so incredibly arrogant he dosn’t even bother to answer the questions properly.
I think his feeling is that because state highways fund themselves (ignoring wider hidden subsidies) he couldn’t care less whether spending on them is good value for money.
“Road trauma is a massive problem for society and it kinda gets ignored to an extent”
Indeed. At least we aren’t like the US where absolutely gob-smacking amounts are wasted to keep people “safe” via a the “war on terror” (not even talking about Iraq-Afghanistan, just within the US), when terrorists on average kill a small trickle of citizens a year – while tens of thousands die on the roads, and more due to pollution.
It is the fact that road trauma is so dispersed (the odd death here and there) and the foolish idea that we, as drivers, have it in our hands whether we get killed or not* which makes people accept it much more.
*Of course driving safely and without alcohol or drugs in your blood WILL reduce your risks massively. Yet it still won’t protect you from a drunk driver in the wrong lane, or the guy screaming through the pedestrian crossing on red when you walk over it.