Thinking about the NLTP announcements and Rudmans article yesterday I wondered, which regions are really doing well out of the funding announcements and which ones aren’t doing so well. It appears that if the name of your region starts with a W then you will be doing much better off. This is based on which regions are getting the most money on a per capita basis from the PR releases that the NZTA made the other day. I based the population figures off the Stats NZ estimates for 2010.

Based on this Auckland at least does better than the national average and it would be really interesting to see a historical breakdown of spending by region to see where it has gone. Aside from Auckland, there are some really interesting results. The west coast per capita spend is high mainly because of the extremely low population there and the need to maintain large amounts of roading infrastructure, the press release highlights that almost all of the spending is on maintenance alone. In Canterbury I am surprised by how low the spending is considering how much needs to be fixed following the earthquakes. Lastly the Manawatu/Whanganui region is really low at less than $1000 per person.

You will also notice that the total announced spending per region doesn’t match up with the $2.3b the NZTA announced in total. Some of that is due to things like road policing not being included but there does seem to be a bit missing. Perhaps that is other stuff that can’t be easily categorised into a single region.

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9 comments

  1. I think your population figures for the Top of the South are wrong- Nelson, Tasman andmMrlborough council eachs have about 40,000 people, which mnakes 120,00 all up.

  2. Wellington and the Waikato are so high because they each have a RoNS project with massive amounts of money going into it over the course of the NLTP.

    Waikato have always done amazingly well out of Central Govt transport spending. Just about every back road in the Waikato is a State Highway. It’s madness!

  3. What happens when you remove the money that is actually coming the local councils like Auckland Council’s 900-odd million contribution to the headline total spend?

  4. Surely what’s important is the tax from each region into the Land Transport Fund, not population. Fuel sales in the region would approximate the vehicle-km’s. There are some regions where a substantial proportion of road use would be non-residents such as tourists (eg West Coast) or travellers passing through (eg Waikato). This would be picked up in the petrol tax take, not population. Furthermore if Aucklanders travel more vehicle-kilometres per head of population than those in other cities, this would increase the tax take from the region, and would not be represented in the per capita stats.

  5. That’s interesting but infrastructure investment has to be based on future usage, not just current figures. Official projections are that most demand pressure will be in the Auckland region. Other areas also have their own future development planning to guide local priorities.

    However we also know many planners and decision-makers have still not grasped the impact of trends like peak oil and better broadband connectivity.

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