I’m still digging through the details of the Government Policy Statement myself, but here’s a good interview on TVNZ 7’s News at 8 programme with Green Party transport spokesman Gareth Hughes (click the image or here for the video):
While it may seem like he said the word “balance” a heck of a lot of times, looking at the funding allocations in the GPS for various different parts of the transport sector, it really is the lack of balance that shines through:
Even really basic stuff like maintaining state highways (funding frozen for the next 6 years) and building & looking after local roads (funding effectively frozen for the next 6 years) are getting screwed over in order to splurge more and more money on new state highways.
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He used the word “balanced” or variations 8 times, but never defined what the word means. If you measure funding against the way people actually transport themselves then I suspect local roads and walking would be underfunded (altho walking is obviously a cheap mode to support) while public transport would be overfunded. Especially rail which carries a tiny number of people at great cost. A couple of times he got close to saying that “balance” means that funding for roads and public transport should be the same. That’s an odd way to look at the issue and he backed off when the interviewer prompted him for some actual numbers.
I’d like Hughes to define “balanced”. At the moment it is just a buzzword that he overuses because everyone likes the idea of balance, but most people don’t think too hard about what it means.
To hazard a guess, I imagine he means something along the lines of the balanced 2010 Regional Land Transport Strategy, which saw around 50% of funding for the next 30 years go on roads and 50% on other stuff, including PT, walking and cycling.
Remember that for new projects expenditure it’s somewhat irrelevant the number of existing users on the system (it’s not like we’re going to rip up any roads), but the rate of change is what’s important as that will determine your capacity levels. So over the past 5-6 years traffic numbers throughout NZ have been steady, while PT patronage in Auckland particularly has boomed. That says to shift your capital expenditure away from building more roads (after all if traffic isn’t increasing why would we need more roads, beyond easing really bad bottlenecks) and into building more of what demand is increasing for.
Does that answer your question?
Saying that “balanced” means a 50:50 split just sounds completely arbitrary. Rather than look at the issue analytically, they’ve just picked the simplest proportion they could think of and used that because it makes for a nice soundbite. You can argue the current allocations on their merits, but at least they’re not a child-like 50:50 split between things the Greens like and things the Greens don’t like. I’m not impressed, but thanks for confirming my suspicion.
I wonder if “balance” applies to other Green infrastructure policies? Maybe a 50:50 split between thermal power and windmills. And a 50:50 split between dial up internet and broadband. And a 50:50 split between reticulated waste water and composting toilets. I suspect government and councils spend way more on centralised sewerage than they do on alternate toilets, and that isn’t even slightly “balanced” by the Green definition.
People can dispute where that balance lies. Nobody can dispute that there’s no balance here.
Balanced should be spending the money where it’s most needed, regardless of mode, in my opinion. That might actually mean spending 80% of transport capital expenditure on PT at some times, or the majority on roads at other times. I don’t know if the Greens do have a particular definition of balanced, but as George says it’s pretty obvious what we have now isn’t balanced.
“it’s not like we’re going to rip up any roads”
That might happen if oil gets expensive enough. The roads are made of it too, and maintaining some lanes might require cannibalising others. Makes pouring money into building more of them in the face of declining traffic volumes and increased demand for public transport options even crazier.
It would have been better if he had said something to the effect of “the government is increasing the spending on new state highways when the NZTA’s own data shows that use of those roads is falling”
He should have also called out Joyce on including completed rail projects in his new funding numbers i.e. Project DART and much of the Wellington funding.
Really? This is what S Joyce’s transport forecast spend is? I thought he might have got the idea that the tax payers are getting a little pi$$ed about his crazy ways but this takes the cake. I would love to ask him “why?” in a live interview along side other transport ministers of other countries who work for the people.
Why indeed, Joyce makes no sense.
This is just nuts. He is actaully beginning to appear a little unhinged.
When will any one in the media do anything other than regurgitate this government’s press releases? For ‘balance’ they even had Ken Shirley of the RTF complaining about how ‘politics’ was forcing money to be wasted on rail in AK, hilarious, given that his wet dream fantasy list has just been drag and dropped into policy by the smarmy lying minister. Please can some one do their job properly here and check these numbers.
Cam I don’t think he’s nuts, but his policies are, and he half knows it, and I bet they can’t believe that they’re still getting away with this, especially so close to an election that is likely to give them complete licence to actually enact this madness. Joyce, the RTF, and mates are just trying it on- and look like they’re going to get away with it. Shameful.
And the insane thing about the policy is that it’s true aim seems to be to spend about 20 billion dollars to prove that rail freight can’t compete with trucking. Look at that RoNS map, the new state highways don’t don’t follow any pattern of need but do follow the county’s rail network… bizarre. That’s a huge amount of money to prove a point, and it can’t work anyway. We will be impoverished by this madness as the price of oil makes those roads into great big empty monuments…. Not necessities, not even nice to have, just plain dumb.
just to answer the question about balance. I think the Greens submission on the GPS did outline what they mean by this. First, they’d like to see the whole funding system changed so that a) projects are allocated money based on which give us the best ROI and b) the ROI should be calculated using a much more holistic system than the current one used by NZTA. The system for calculating costs/benefits of transport projects should take into account environmental benefits, health benefits, urban design, climate change, increasing oil prices etc.
Second, they outline the balance of funding they would like to see over the next 10 years using the current (flawed) system. This would shift immediately to about a 40% spent on PT, walking and cycling to 60% roads. Then the proportion going to PT, walking and cycling would gradually increase over time until in 2020 it would be about 66% of budghet I think…
It would be nice to achieve a quicker shift but there are certain physical realities that prevent this (i.e., if we cut our motorway budget tmw then the Kopu Bridge or Newmarket viaduct would, uiqte literally, only go half way across the gap they are meant to bridge). Same with Waterview once it begins construction – cut the motorway budget in 2013 and you would have half a tunnel! Not much use to anybody 🙂 Finally, I think it would be very hard for the construction industry to move away from building roads and towards building PT, even as quickly as the Greens have outlined in their submission on the GPS. It would be a massive, seismic shift in some of the biggest companies (and employers) in NZ so difficult to do in just 10 years.
This is roughly the same funding split as the members bill Jeanette Fitzsimons put into Parliament back in, oh I don’t know when, about 2007.
And where is Labour on this? Silence…..
Labour has a transport spokesperson?
@KLK totally agree- what a useless shower of no hopers Labour are at the moment. They are so ineffectual it’s no wonder they getting hammered in the polls.