An article in the NZ Herald today raises the typical old debate of whether tolls should be introduced to fund another harbour crossing. If any issue was ever likely to raise the heckles of the North Shore, this is it:
Transport Agency consultants believe tolls of $6 to $8 could pay for a new Auckland harbour crossing. The tolls would be charged on the new crossing and the existing harbour bridge. The figures are in a report which the Auckland Council has circulated to local boards on options for building and paying for a $5.1 billion pair of motorway tunnels, or a new bridge for up to $3.9 billion. Preliminary investigations suggest a new bridge could be fully paid for with a toll of $6 each way to use it and the existing bridge, and an $8 toll would be needed to pay for the tunnels.
I have no issue with tolling roads in theory, although the obvious problem here with tolling both the new and existing crossing is that you wouldn’t really have a viable free alternative available. Even with the Western Ring Route completed, it’s a bit of a stretch to call the Upper Harbour Bridge an alternative for most of the trips. What the tolling issue does, in my mind, is simply point out how utterly extremely expensive both the bridge and tunnel options are for an additional harbour crossing. One would think that it would be essential for a project that’s so extremely expensive to be justified by a cost-benefit analysis that shows a very high return on the investment. Of course, in this case it simply isn’t true, with the bridge option having a BCR of 0.6 and the tunnel option have a BCR of 0.4. Even then I think the cost-benefit ratios are probably too high, as they’re based on the assumption of increasing levels of traffic:
How does this assumption of growth compare with what’s been happening in recent years:
The 2010 to 2011 jump is largely because they’re different months of the year. If we take a look at NZTA’s May 2011 traffic report, we see that flows across the harbour bridge are down 4% on last year: 
But many will argue another harbour crossing is needed because the existing one is coming to the end of its useable life – particularly the clip-ons. This is outlined in the article:
The agency believes a new crossing will be within 20 years as the existing bridge’s clip-on lanes start wearing out.
That’s actually not really what they said. What their report actually said in regards to the clip-ons is this: 
So in other words, the clip-ons are fine indefinitely, except for the fact that it might be necessary to restrict some heavier trucks from using them in the longer term. Considering we’re spending billions on the Western Ring Route, largely so that freight can bypass the central part of the motorway system – I really don’t see what the problem is. Unsurprisingly the tolling has got North Shore politicians being grump as anything:
The bridge consultants’ report has horrified some North Shore local politicians. The Kaipatiki Local Board, covering a large area including Glenfield and Birkenhead, has passed a resolution opposing any tolls on the existing 52-year-old bridge. Board member Vivienne Keohane said yesterday that the toll suggestions were “absolutely outrageous”. “A lot of people wouldn’t be able to travel to work – imagine paying $60 to $80 a week out of your wages.” Mrs Keohane said North Shore residents such as herself, who had lived in Glenfield since 1968, had paid for the bridge during its first 25 years, and would not accept a new toll.
I completely agree Mrs Keohane. But please, don’t follow this up by repeating how supposedly important another harbour crossing is.
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I thought the salient point in the whole article was this:
‘But traffic forecasts showed harbour crossings were likely to halve by 2041 with a $6 toll and drop to 40 per cent with an $8 toll’
Since we don’t need a bridge now or even in the reasonably near future maybe a peak time toll (along with a variable T3 or T4 lane) would reduce demand to the point it is never needed.
I actually think that Steven Selwoods comments in the article are probably the best and something I have though for some time, instead of just tolling one point, we need to consider tolling the entire motorway network with funds from that going to development of projects like a new crossing. A toll on just one place like the bridge would force a lot of people on to the alternate route which would put more pressure on that and people would then be wanting even more motorway widening of SH16 (above the 5 lanes we are already getting westbound)
The only problem with that idea (which has some merit) is whether it would push a lot more traffic onto local roads – with impacts on PT, walking, cycling and general urban amenity.
The trick to that would be AT having well defined and clear priorities for those roads i.e. by having bus lanes well marked and policed. It then gives people 3 options, pay a toll to drive on the motorway and get a fairly quick trip, sit in traffic on a local road or catch a bus which avoids that congestion
Which local roads though? There aren’t any crossing the central or upper harbour, there aren’t any crossing the manukau harbour at Mangere, there aren’t any along the NW causway, and only a couple to the ithsmus in the west and south.
Toll all these motorway pinchpoint links, and run full time buslanes on the four local arterials in parallel. If the remaing arterial lanes get congested then so be it, that has the same demand reduction effect as tolling.
Anyone who doesn’t want to pay a toll can sit in traffic, take pt, walk/cycle or perhaps most importantly travel locally and avoid the pinch points completely.
Although I agree with you regarding alternatives for the Northern and North-western routes, you miss the fairly viable alternative to the South-western that is going through Mangere and Otahuhu. As a cyclist I’m eminently familiar with the non-motorway routes to the west and south (I’m not thrilled by the Upper Harbour crossing, so don’t do it), and the distances involved in bypassing the South-western motorway are pretty minimal. They’re certainly inconvenient compared to the motorway but they’re absolutely not so significant as to make it an impracticality, especially when being bundled with detouring through Te Atatu and New Lynn or crossing the top of the Waitemata Harbour.
I’m with arnie, toll the cars, watch the Northern Busway explode! Better get a lot more feeder services and probably park’n’ride happening first though. The clip-ons can become permanent bus lanes.
The article does show just how hard it will be to get a harbour rail tunnel funded though…. people do not like cross mode subsidy do they?
Why not toll by time? Say $6 during peak time, $4 during the day and $2 at nights and weekends. Because the extra lanes are really only needed for peak times you are in effect making the people who will benefit the most pay the most.
That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. A peak time toll to take the edge off demand. The bridge isn’t really the choke point in peak hours in any case as there aren’t 5 lanes of approaches/exits from the bridge (well not yet anyway)
Does anyone seriously believe a politician could implement a $6 toll and not be instantly de-elected in favour of the first politician who promises to get rid of it? it is serious question, because I would say that a toll of this amount – an extra $60PW for a commuter in a car – would immediately be rejected by Aucklanders if given a chance.
It depends. A) You’d need to introduce it tactically, i.e. either when you are high in the polls anyway, or shortly after an election. Then you’d have some time for it to bed in, and people’s ire to reduce.
Secondly, you need to show the money is being put to good use.
But yeah, I agree. It’s a VERY hot political potato to toll something that was un-tolled in the past, and that is likely to not happen because of that. And why should it. Not urgent. The whole thing is a sham debate.
It has been updated with some comments from Steven saying not only is there likely to be a toll but rate payers will have to pay as well.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10736427
Also says at the bottom, “Mr Joyce said there would be an announcement on Wellington rail today.”
What’s the bet it is either the government shifting Wellington to an Auckland model and dramatically increasing operating costs or giving more of a contribution towards rail upgrades while continuing to force Auckland to pay its upgrades back.
I think $6 is too much and unfair on North Shore residents. I would support a toll on all motorways though, say $4 during peak, $2 off peak. I think this would really help clear traffic off the bridge though and would encourage lots of usage on the Northern Express (we would need some new articulated buses though), patronage would get to the point eventually that we would need to consider building a rail tunnel though I think.
The most worrying thing about that article, if you ask me, is that they never even mentioned the possibility that the crossing might include rail…it all seemed to be about motorway tunnels.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they are putting more money into Wellington rail – apparently it needs a lot more investment and all those public servants are complaining about late trains (although the Wellington rail network still has better reliability than AUckland).
What a horrible funding model we have. It leads to terrible outcomes. Nobody’s happy. Let’s elect a government that allows Auckland to create the right funding and cost/incentive mix.
(I’m not sure that government exists yet, in power or opposition, but it’s worth a try).
It’s called The Green Party, George, have you read Gareth Hughes on this: http://www.greens.org.nz/press-releases/govt-infrastructure-plan-full-contradictions
I do love Gareth (he was even my boss at Greenpeace a few years ago) and the Greens, and I think they will add immensely to any Government they form a part of. I’m not sure at this stage how they would influence a Labour Government, due to the lack of engagement by Labour with the issues. This could be a good or bad thing – an unengaged Labour could open up possibilities for the Greens to lead on policy.
It seems to me the main rationale for a second harbour crossing is that eventually the clip-ons will wear out, and whilst they could be replaced it would be unnaceptable to have the bridge operating with only 6 lanes for any length of time.
Surely though there would be a cheaper option than building a whole other crossing for this one scenario. How expensive would leasing and running 2-3 vehicle ferries for free or low cost, and increasing PT subsidies for a couple of years? Surely it would be in the tens of millions as opposed to billions? The clip-ons could potentially be built back with an extra lane even to allow a dedicated bus way. This would save an awful lot of money I would have thought.
Swan but there is no need. The article itself shows that demand on the bridge can be managed by pricing… of course better passenger ferries and improved connections to them and to the busway to offer alternatives to more cars will be needed too. Car ferries are a backward step.
I agree that road pricing to manage demand is the first best option. But assuming that is politically unnacebtable, and that people are concerned about the resiliency of the existing structure (in particular the clip-ons), there are still cheaper options than a second crossing. My vehicle ferries idea would be a temporary measure during clip-on replacement in order to make the project more politically acceptable.
Here’s an idea – once Waterview is complete, aggressive Harbour Bridge road pricing for heavy vehicles. The rationale for replacement is that is wearing out slowly, and heavy vehicles contribute most of that wear. A charge of at least $20 for a large truck seems about right. Waterview will allow a serious alternative route and conservation of the bridge.
George-YES!
I don’t think there’s cause for a ban entirely – you might occasionally have time dependent freight from the port to the North for example – but you should have to pay disproportionately for the privilege and justify it over the slightly longer time and distance you’d otherwise travel. $20 would be at the lower end of charges that should be levied.
But it won’t happen while we have a minister who acts as if he’s owned by the trucking industry. (remember when they went into revolt over slightly higher charges and National backed them to the hilt?)
Has anybody spotted the major red herrings? Tolling both crossings will raise enough revenue to pay for the additional crossing. But it is not possible for toll revenues from the provision of a new service can exceed the willingness to pay for that link, which was demonstrated to fall far short of the cost to construct (i.e. $400m in present value terms to travellers themselves).
Can anyone figure out why the great contradiction?
Ok, I’ll tell you. It’s because the proposal covered by the Herald is to toll both crossings, which is just a tax on accessibility. It’s just a Ramsey tax on a service with the steepest demand curve. If you just taxed the current bridge and spent the money on education you would raise billions. The notion of tolling both routes has nothing to do whatsoever with the need for, or case to build an additional crossing.
It’s like road pricing, but without the redeeming features of road pricing that sustainably and economically efficiently manages demand on a congested bottleneck. Think of this as just a tax, or as an exceptionally poorly conceived congestion charge.
In summary: (1) the case to toll the AHB has nothing to do with the case for the AWHC. (2) if you are considering tolling the AHB just because it’s a monopoly bottleneck, then consider more efficient means to do so (eg bring in a properly designed congestion charging system)
Agree with the last post.
Too many toll proposals are narrow and targeted eg to a particular piece of infrastructure, which makes them both inefficient and discriminatory.
The bridge or tunnel will be expensive, but so are the other bridges and motorways that have been built over the years, and not tolled.
And the other matter is we tend to tax the efficient component eg long distance travel over motorways, rather than the inefficient (long distance travel using crowded city streets) and what were supposed to be ‘bypasses’ are self defeating because the toll applies to the bypass, when it should apply to what is being bypassed .
And this is pure inefficiency if people end up driving around your tolled asset, wasting time, petrol and causing needless congestion to others.
A general road user changing system, with specific prices for routes and times of day based on congestion, but otherwise applying to the whole, is what is required.
Land value capture, to the extent that the road system charging doesn’t pick this up, should also apply. North Shore residents, who chose to be there rather than somewhere that doesn’t require expensive bridges and tunnels, should pay some premium (but not necessarily the full amount, which could be recovered across the broader system)
To add to my comment – different topic but same principle, European high speed rail.
The thinking in both France and Germany is not that the HSR is a luxury add-on to a vanilla medium speed train service. Instead, it is a capacity augmentation/relief strategy for vanilla medium speed services that are already at capacity . Therefore the HSR basis for comparison is a continued expansion of existing services, which also costs money, and in some cases, not a whole lot less than building the HSR.
It is therefore unfair to load up the HSR model with luxury premium fare recovery, and charge nothing to the retention of existing services. In many/most cases, the HSR model ‘streams’ passenger services apart from each other (segregating medium speed from high speed operations) and thereby improves the efficiency of both.
For example, some of you might think the Paris-Lyon or for that matter Tokyo-Osaka services were done as standalone new projects – in fact both were based on the existing routes exceeding capacity, especially with freight and passenger interacting.
Getting back to Auckland, despite the expense of bridge or tunnel, if it is fact justified from a broader nationwide picture, it should not be loaded up as ‘premium’ when it is a core part of a nationwide response, instead, the network’s costs/benefits as a whole assessed, and charges, if the need arises, against the alternatives to the bridge tunnel, also be allocated.
Benefits and disbenefits often accrue across a wide range of stakeholders – users on the primary route, users on the secondary route, non-users, land owners and so on, and it is worth capturing all those benefits for both ‘do nothing’ and ‘do something’ options.
Hey Riccardo, great points on how we should come at tolling, congestion charging, and land value capture mechanisms more generally. They are painful, but necessary. Key to getting public buy-in, amongst many other things, is developing the case that the investments are needed in the first place, and that they can’t be done without the painful measures.
That’s why getting our appraisal frameworks is so important. But a ‘lesser of two evils’ approach only works when the NZTA can credibly demonstrate they won’t choose the politically expedient way through; that they will wait out the investment until the region is prepared to stump up with cash. If NZTA were to fold because of political lobbying, then people will hold out. That’s one major reason why maintaining the independence of the NZTA Board is so important. (And I question whether a Board is independent when the Minister tells it what roads to build! Is the NZTA Board in breach of its statutory obligations?)
Ha ha ha guys that rich for Stephen Joyce saying that the Green Party is biased and supports rail over highways, but thinks spending $1.5 billion on rail and $6.5b on roads is not being biased, go figure! I do love this statement in the NZ Herald though that he uses as an excuse to show that he is not being biased.
“Unfortunately the Greens have a favouritism for rail over everything else, and they somehow accuse me of a bias.”
You have just answered your own question Joycie the fact is you are being biased, the $6.5 billion you plan to spend on Statehighways highways is just the tip of the iceberg!. $1.5 billion dollars on rail is lunch money, and the fact that $1.5b, includes a heap of much needed to things to keep the rail network maintained, whereas the $6.5 b on roads is just the start. So whos being biased now huh?
The rail network has been neglected in NZ for years far longer than the statehighway network. The with NZ and most other countries in the world, building motorways don’t solve congestion they just encourage people to use their cars.
Add a congestion charge of $1 to the bridge right now, on the premise of it paying for future bridge repairs or replacement. Charge more for trucks in proportion to their weight/damage to the bridge (I guess twice the weight probably means 4 times the damage?).
Have an annual review of the charge versus traffic and increase it as required.
Anyone have traffic statistics for the years before & after tolls were removed?
The weight/damage calculation is that every doubling of axle weight increases damage by the fourth power. So if damage at weight x is 2, damage at weight x*2 will be 2^4=16.
And given that Joyce won’t allow permits for 53T trucks to be priced to capture all the damage they do, there’s no hope that he’ll let the AHB be tolled to capture the damage trucks do to the clip-on.
That’s the 4th power rule for damage to flexible pavements. Fatigue life on the underlying structure of the bridge is a different issue. It’s proportional to the 3rd power of the total load so a 53 tonne truck will cause 1.75 times the fatigue loading that a 44 tonne truck does.
Interesting. I’m not an engineer, so hadn’t heard of that rule. I’m only familiar with the 4th power rule because I’ve seen it raised elsewhere and went to Google to confirm it. What constitutes a “flexible pavement”?