This is a very timely post from Bike Auckland, re-published here with kind permission. See also yesterday’s post by Patrick on the abundantly clear case for funding cycling as the powerful “stealth mode” for easy access to and around our city.
The short version
The central Government’s transport plan has vastly underfunded walking and cycling, leaving a budget shortfall for Auckland Council.
Over the next couple of weeks the Councillors will be deciding which projects to continue and which to pause. It’s an important time to write to your local representatives and show your support for investment in cycling, highlighting any projects which are important to you, and expressing your desire for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to become a real world class city – with a safe, connected cycle network.
→ Write to your representative with our Letter to Councillors Cheat Sheet
→ Find Auckland Council email addresses here
In this article
- There’s a budget shortfall for transport
- What type of projects are at risk?
- What’s the process now?
- Interrupting the pipeline
- No budget to ‘build back better’ when roads are renewed
- What should I do?
- A list of cycling programmes and projects which may be at risk
- What are the NLTP, the RLTP, and the GPS?
There’s a budget shortfall for transport
There is a $561 million shortfall over the next 3 yrs for transport in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, with the central Government’s transport programme (NLTP, defined below) setting aside less than 1% of our region’s transport allocation to walking and cycling. Essentially our central Government has committed to funding the completion of cycleways which are already underway but won’t put anything towards getting started on new cycleways – which means it’s up to our local council to fund new local cycleways directly.
We’re not alone in this, many other Councils are feeling the sting of this Government’s National Land Transport Programme (NLTP), which prompted Hamilton Mayor Paula Southgate to ask the important question “Are we being equipped to deal with our growth?”
But at the same time, according to news reports, the central Government has provided a “record investment” in public transport, roads, and road maintenance.
How can both these statements be true? Because while the amount of money put towards public transport and roads is a record investment compared to previous investments on a per dollar basis, the numbers have not been adjusted for inflation (and don’t reflect rising costs). This means that even though more money has been put in, we won’t get more benefit for transport out of it. In fact, we almost certainly won’t get more done because the majority of the transport budget will be gobbled up by motorways – and just one road, the Northland Expressway, could take 10% of the Government’s entire transport budget for the next 25 years.
Which does make me wonder, what would it look like if we did adjust for inflation? How would that compare to previous investments? We’d love some data nerds to look into it and tell us.
What type of projects are at risk?
Auckland Council are faced with a funding shortfall for many projects which are ready to be built (shovel-ready), but also, crucially, for investigating the pipeline of upcoming projects. If Auckland Council and Auckland Transport don’t allocate additional funding to these projects, the network planning of cycleways can’t take place, and cycling is effectively left out of the future of our region. More on the pipeline below.
See also this list of cycling programmes and projects which may be at risk.
What’s the process now?
Over the next few weeks Auckland Council are going through a process to determine what to do about the budget shortfall. On 18 September they held an open workshop to give guidance to Waka Kotahi and Auckland Transport staff for their investigation into the options from here.
You can watch or listen to this presentation here. And see their slides here.
The transport staff will be presenting options to the Auckland Council in a workshop after their next Transport, Resilience, and Infrastructure Committee meeting on the 3rd of October. The workshop recording will be available here for the public to watch afterwards. The final decision would be made sometime in October.
If you’ve been following the saga of the NLTP and RLTP you’ll already know that walking and cycling is vastly underfunded. For context, the UN for the Environment recommends 20% of transport investment goes to active modes, while Aotearoa is investing 1.4%. The transport staff at the workshop reiterated this: “The biggest funding shortfalls are smaller projects and new cycling projects”
For the projects where the co-share from the Central Government is missing, the transport staff or Councillors will be deciding whether to
- Pause the project and reallocate the Council’s share of funding from it to another project, or
- Allocate additional funding to it to enable the project to continue (presumably by pausing a different project)
- Somehow find additional funding (such as from increasing rates, which is unlikely)
Even the projects which have been allocated funding from the Central Government could be paused in order to free up Auckland Council’s co-share of funding from those projects. If this happens, the Central Government’s share of funding for that project would be lost from our region and even projects like Great North Road (which is supposed to start construction in October) wouldn’t be safe. So much of the community has contributed to the design of these improvements over the past many years, it would be a tragedy to cut them off especially when they are, in many cases like Great North Road, shovel-ready.
Interrupting the pipeline
Many of the existing projects we are discussing are ready to be delivered, like Great North Road, or are at various stages of their design and planning. However, there are also projects at earlier stages of the process – those marked for investigation.
For a cycling infrastructure project to be delivered, a concept is first assessed in an investigation phase, and then goes through a design phase, which typically includes public consultation and can take several years.
Investigation includes working out if the project meets criteria such as connecting into the existing or committed cycleway network, offering good value for money, prioritising connections that help the most people, and prioritising areas where safety risks are highest.
If potential projects are not being investigated, there is no pipeline of projects which can advance to design and delivery phases.
Essentially, if we turn off the funding tap for new cycling projects to be investigated, we introduce a long delay (likely around five years) before we can expect to see new cycling infrastructure being delivered. The transport agency departments who work on active modes projects are likely to lose experienced staff members, and potentially be drastically reduced or restructured, making it incredibly difficult (and more expensive) to restart the pipeline again once the funding returns.
Central Government’s NLTP has done just that – it includes zero funding for new cycling projects.
We dread the impact this would have on our region. As our population grows, the infrastructure to support it would become less and less fit for purpose. We would be going backwards relative to so many other cities around the world which are putting in place policies and infrastructure to reduce their emissions and create live-able communities.
In order to avoid a years-long gap in our pipeline, we desperately need Auckland Council to backfill central Government’s funding shortfall.
No budget to ‘build back better’ when roads are renewed
During the workshop, Cr Julie Fairey asked the transport staff about the budget for maintenance and renewals, which also has a smaller pot of Central Government co-funding than expected. In particular, Cr Fairey was querying whether there was still enough funding available to “build back better” when doing a renewal. Instead of replacing the road exactly the way it was (called ‘like for like’), ‘building back better’ is when elements of the road are improved during the renewal process. This allows for the road design to be brought up to modern standards and for crucial accessibility improvements like curb cuts to be delivered cost effectively as roads are renewed across the region.
The transport staff replied that with the existing budget that was available, ‘there is virtually no funding’ to build back better with renewals. They said if this is important to the Council they will need to add ‘local share’ funding to allow for improvements that are of significance to the local community.
What should I do?
The transport staff have asked the Council what their priorities are. This means it’s a critical moment for your Councillors to hear from you. It will make a difference.
You can help by writing to your elected representatives and showing your support for investment in cycling.
You could…
- Highlight any particular cycleway projects that you are excited for and want to see continue, explaining how they will positively impact your life.
- Express your support for “building back better” with renewals, a cost effective way of creating small improvements to our roads over time.
- Share how bike skills courses, bike hubs, and the e-bike library schemes have helped you – these ‘soft infrastructure’ programmes deserve recognition for their importance alongside ‘hard infrastructure’ like cycleways in supporting people to take up cycling for transport.
- Remind them of the multiple benefits of cycleway investment, and that cycling is broadly supported; 60% of New Zealanders are supportive of cycleways and after Auckland’s deliberative forum on transport participant’s support rose to 85%. On top of this, 85.5% of kids say active travel is their favourite way to get around.
→ Write to your representative with our Letter to Councillors Cheat Sheet
→ Find Auckland Council email addresses here
A list of cycling programmes and projects which may be at risk
Programmes with confirmed national funding in the NLTP
- Cycleways Programme (Lower Cost) ~ Māngere East
- Cycleways Programme (Lower Cost) ~ Manukau
- Cycling for Climate Action (single stage business cases)
- Albany Highway
- Kelston-New Lynn
- Manurewa
- Great North Road Improvement
- Urban Cycleway Projects
Programmes with some confirmed funding from NLTP, but not the full amount
- The Road Safety Programme (including ‘soft infrastructure’ like bike skills courses and bike hubs)
- Maintenance, Operations, and Renewals Programme
Other programmes
- Cycleways Programme (Lower Cost) (including the pop up protection programme)
- Cycling for Climate Action (includes projects all over the region including Hobsonville, Kelston-New Lynn, Manurewa, Albany, Onehunga, East Coast Road and Takapuna)
- Meadowbank to Kohimarama Connectivity Project (Gowing Drive connection to Glen Innes to Tāmaki Pathway)
- Māngere West Cycleway
- Supporting Growth (Active Mode Corridor)
- Walking for Climate Action – Manurewa
- First and Final Leg Programme (improving connections to public transport)
- Safer Speed Programme
What are the NLTP, the RLTP, the LTP and the GPS?
The Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, often shortened to GPS for convenience (but not to be confused with other Government Policy Statements), is the Central Government’s high-level transport policy. It sets out the Government’s priorities for the next 10 years, what kinds of transport projects it expects to see from Waka Kotahi NZTA across Aotearoa New Zealand, and what it wants to invest in – and therefore, what local Councils will be able to get central government funding for. Because a fair amount of our transport projects are co-funded by Waka Kotahi, this can have a big impact on what kinds of infrastructure we can build locally.
Following on from the priorities outlined in the GPS, the National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) is completed. This is the country’s 10 year plan for transport and includes funding for regional programmes.
The Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP), created by Auckland Transport and Auckland Council, is an outline of our region’s investment in transport over the next 10 years. It aims to identify the transport challenges we are facing now and over the next decade, and which transport projects will be delivered first. It includes expectations for project co-funding from the NLTP as well as Council funding.
Each of these 10 year plans are reviewed every 3 years, and are highly susceptible to changes in Government.
A portion of the funding to deliver the Regional Land Transport Plan is supplied by Auckland Council through the Long Term Plan (LTP). The LTP is the Council’s overall 10-year budget. Another portion is supplied by Waka Kotahi NZTA as outlined in their NLTP.
Because the current Government’s priorities are focussed on motorways, the GPS and NLTP completed this year both prioritise building new roads at the expense of vital walking and cycling projects. This has led to the $561 million shortfall in budget for our RLTP which our Council are now focusing on responding to.
→ Write to your representative with our Letter to Councillors Cheat Sheet
→ Find Auckland Council email addresses here
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Previous governments provided lots of money for all manner of things including cycling initiatives. Now that we’ve borrowed $100B, the money is gone, we’ve essentially been in recession for 2 years and people are hurting, the government are justifiably being careful with all their spending.
I’d see the bigger problem being NIMBY, and the inability of council to actually get anything built. Consider how long the Pt Chev and Meola cycleways are taking. How long has the cycle network plan been in place? Remember the cycle to schools initiative.
“are justifiably being careful with all their spending.”
That is the line that some are trotting out, and you seem to have bought hook and sinker.
The issue is that even in Labour years, ACTUAL transport funding for bikes never rose over 1-2% of the whole transport network. In other words, less than people were already biking. Yes, Labour were good at announcing, and talk ready and some other sources were great at claiming that bikeways were being built everywhere. Actual spend? Very, very little.
Now a car-focussed govt comes in, and cuts cycling even more from it’s low starting point, while blowing out – massively blowing out – any highways budget. And people like you say it’s good stewardship of money?
Well, their PR is clearly working on some.
The Meola road rebuild was more than just cycleways. You don’t seem to understand that.
Highly debatable that they are being careful with their spending. They are throwing billons at roads with negative BCRs (see RoNS) but can’t shell out for a new hospital for Otago/Southland.
Whom exactly are the people hurting?
No they’re not. They’re planning to spend in the vicinity of $4 billion to bypass Dome Valley and Warkworth, nothing about that is being careful with money.
They also pulled funding from cycleways around the country that were in the advanced stage of design, wasting a pile of ratepayers money on consultation and design that ultimately went nowhere.
In addition they’re making councils spend money on removing and replacing speed limit signs and likely requiring them to spend a pile of time and money re-consulting on the most important speed limit reductions that happened between 2019 and 2025, just to get them back to where they are now.
This has nothing to do with saving money and all about a petulant response to anything the previous government did or talked about.
“…a petulant response to anything the previous government did or talked about.”
And the Transport Minister then says he wants a bi-partisan approach to infrastructure…..
What a great comment to kick off, gave me a good laugh
‘the government are justifiably being careful with all their spending.’
How’s that 10% of whole infrastructure budget towards 4 lanes to Whangerei with very little business case to do so.
Nice one! Love a bit of satire on a Wednesday morning.
I agree that it takes too long for cycling projects to be delivered and they’re impacted far too much by a small group of vocal opponents.
But stating that “the government are justifiably being careful with all their spending” is laughable. If there’s one thing this government ISN’T being it’s careful with money. Their commitments to large-scale roading projects will burden future budgets for decades!
Lolly lol lol. The government being justifiably careful by rinsing 10% of the whole infrastructure budget on a road nobody needs or a massive tunnel through Wellington. or the worlds most expensive road?
Just call it what it is, a culture war.
They spent $3 billion a year on a $20 a week tax cut. Instead of that we could have had a new CRL or LRT type project every 2 years, hundreds of bike projects, some ferries across the cook straight, new hospitals, etc.
If that stuff mattered then we could have juggled it and a $3b tax cut. After 14 years of taxing inflation, it’s on them to come up with a better solution.
I could be equally cynical and say that if it it mattered, we would have used some of the absolutely stonking growth in Crown revenues over the six few years to have built that stuff already, and yet it did not matter enough to do it.
I guess what I’m saying is that it’s time for the militant wing of the United Future Party to have a crack at a junta type arrangement.
I think CRL has made it to $5.5 billion.
Expect more to come.
Buttwizard they need to tax inflation just to make up for the ageing population.
The cycleways are mostly done. It’s the road rebuilds that seem to take a while. Although it does seem to take an exceptionally long time for the roadworks to be done along Pt Chev Rd. There always seems to be tons of people doing a lot of things all the time, so I struggle to call them out for not being there/doing things.
Cycleways also save people money by allowing them to better manage without a car. Road safety measures also reduce the costs resulting from accidents. And cycling is good for people’s health also.
Councils and governments should be making good business decisions and building infrastructure which gives the best bang for the buck or has the best benefit to cost ratio. Bikeways do that. Poor business decisions are very costly to all of us and result in people moving to better managed countries.
Whilst cycling out west yesterday, l saw a new bridge being built at Te Atatu to link to NW cycleway.This morning l saw an article on Otaki Bridge clip on walking / cycling bridge,mainly to do with motorist impatience,”you know cyclists holding up ,other traffic”.
So there is still some active mode investment, still going on,we have to celebrate these small gains.
Believe you are referring to the Te Whau Pathway at Te Atatū, funding for that section came from shovel ready Covid programme. Unfortunately no funding is confirmed to complete the path that would give people from Green Bay to Te Atatū easy active access to Transit ( New Lynn and WX)
It seems unlikely that the Great North Road upgrades will be cancelled at this stage given that it has been funded under the NLTP and given how far advanced the project is. I reached out to AT a few weeks ago and they responded that they are in tender negotiations with bidders – so it’s hard to see it being cancelled at this stage. There would be a massive backlash if it were given that it’s been in the planning stage for over 10 years.
You could probably have said that about the Cook Strait ferries but look where we are with that.
Difference here I think is that the current govt has actually funded the Great North Rd upgrades through the NLTP whereas with Cook Strait it was funded by Labour and then defunded by National. Anything is possible until the work is actually done though …
I’d love to mail my local councilors but don’t image there’s much point given they’re Williamson and Stewart.
Please do though as they need to know there is support even if they don’t agree. My ward mate is not known for her active transport support but every person that emails me and I can see they sent it to her too, or they tell me they have also written to her, helps me to be able to know support is not just coming to me as a known friendly councillor on this issue. Hope that makes sense! Ps I have been getting a lot of emails on this, good stuff!
I am not sure why we spend in doing the cycle lanes at exorbitant costs when most cyclist still prefer using the main roads and annoying most motorist who pay RUC and have supported in paying for the cycle lanes too.
Hi Regunathan. Your first point is untrue, the data shows that by far the most bike use is on cycleways. True some sports riders prefer the smooth tarmac and traffic, but they are not the majority.
On your second point, our transport budget is only in part sourced from fuel tax and RUCs. Not even mostly. Especially for local roads which are at least 50% from local govt rates. And the NLTF component is majority sourced from general taxes (ie instead of hospitals and schools). There is little user pays in transport.
Anyway cycling gets tiny amounts, heading down to zero under this government. Without any justification- it is a legitimate form of transport and people should expect to be able to do it and stay safe. That is the government’s duty of care.
One option would be to immediately remove the highly subsidised residential parking permit schemes for wealthy homeowners in inner suburbs and replace with sensible market priced meters.
Could also cut funding for renewals so the outer lanes of multi-lane arterials aren’t renewed, then put in some tim tams to protect motorists from accidentally entering the outer lanes and hitting potholes.
As one of the few who thinks that cars are terrible, and useless, not to mention uncool, boring, and somewhat like tiny mobile prisons; I will never understand why others love sitting, often alone, in these strange machines.
Buses, ferries and trains are marvellous inventions, throw in a bike, or a skateboard if you’re cooler than me, and everywhere in our city becomes accessible.
Our current government reminds me of my four year old boy, who enjoys being anti whatever his big brother says. But for supposed adults, it is saddening how much this government wants to divide us, exactly the opposite of what our former prime minister did with us during COVID.
Embarrassing to be from here, but in the end they cannot defeat us, because we can ride bikes, and bike riders are rather healthy, just ask my seventy three year old dad.
bah humbug
It doesn’t help matters any when there is so much wastage.
Take for example the North Western Cycleway alongside the North Western Motorway. Great project….. but….. in the next few years all those tens of millions of dollars will be expensively ripped up to make way for the NW Busway and then expensively rebuilt again a few metres over (where they should have been built in the first place!).
Sadly, this is not the only example of similar practices taking place in Auckland. Bridges being rebuilt almost exactly the same but slightly shifted are another example.
Building permanent (and more expensive) permanent median barriers (and side barriers) vs tried and true removable concrete barriers is ridiculous – even more so in places where it is known and easily foreseeable that they will need to be relocated.
There are community projects like Te Whau that have s great BCR but no ONGOING support. So close to realising benefits but no backers.