For whom the harbour bridge tolls…

Many people want a new harbour crossing, but do they want to pay $9 for it every time they cross the harbour?

Yesterday Te Waihanga, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission released its National Infrastructure Plan (NIP). A lot of their case feels very familiar to many of the arguments we’ve made over many years, especially about transport investment.

We’ll cover ithe NIP in more detail in later posts, but given there’s already been a lot of focus on the harbour crossing question – and potential tolling for it – let’s start with that.

(Note: I spoke to RNZ’s Morning Report about it this morning; written version here).

The idea of a new harbour crossing in Auckland has been around pretty much since the moment the existing Harbour Bridge opened in 1959. It is also perhaps the most studied transport project in the country, with more than half a dozen different studies or proposals over the last few decades alone (and there have been a few more since that 2019 post).

You have to wonder how many millions have been spent on the unbuilt crossing, across all this time.

The current government has been undertaking its own investigations of the project – including weighing up the question of whether it should be a bridge or a tunnel – and we understand that a decision could be made public as soon as next month.

We don’t know how much the project will cost, but the previous government’s proposal suggested a road tunnel and associated improvements to SH1 could come in around $16 billion. Given the way transport project costs have been going up lately, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is now closer to $20 billion.

By any measure, a bridge would almost certainly be far less costly than a tunnel (hold that thought).

How to fund a project of this scale is the key reason why all the previous studies haven’t resulted in anything actually being built. As part of the NIP, the Infrastructure Commission has weighed in on the question of how to pay for a crossing – which is what’s been seized on by media.

Here’s what the Infrastructure Commission says:

The Waitematā Harbour Crossing project is different. Unlike other road and rapid transit upgrades, it is unlikely to be fundable through normal transport revenues. Building the original bridge required a steep toll, equal to $9 in inflation-adjusted terms. The current crossing faces maintenance, resilience, and capacity pressures, but repeated investigations have yet to identify an affordable solution.

New revenue will be needed to fund a new crossing. The Commission’s high-level analysis suggests that a $9 toll on both new and existing crossings could raise up to $7–9 billion, depending on the tolling period. Higher tolls may not raise more revenue, as they would divert too many users and erode viability, and tolling only the new crossing would sharply limit revenue. Other funding mechanisms are possible, but would likely require non-users to contribute funding which may not be considered equitable or favourable. Decision-makers will ultimately need to confirm revenue potential from tolling or other funding instruments like Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act levies, and identify options that fit within this envelope. In the meantime, time-of-use charging, interim busway upgrades, and improved maintenance and monitoring should be considered to extend the life of the existing asset.

And in the related notes, we find this (emphasis added):

New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Understanding capacity upgrade pressures across infrastructure networks (2026).

Transport modelling suggests a total of around 224,000 vehicles would use both the new and existing crossings in 2051. Charging a $9 toll would divert a substantial share of these users to other transport modes or other routes, leading to net present value revenues on the order of $7-9 billion.

A $9 toll does indeed feel pretty steep compared to the few other toll roads that we have in New Zealand, and many of the comments I’ve seen in response to the news have baulked at the idea of paying that much – especially when calculating the costs of regular daily commutes on individual drivers.

We should also note that a toll is likely to divert users not just to other transport modes (public transport, presumably, but at least one other option is currently impossible, with no active modes access for people who might want to walk, run, bike or scoot across the harbour) – but may divert people away from making some journeys altogether.

Traffic evaporation is real, as we’ve seen previously when routes have had to be closed for repair and rebuilding – including the current bridge.

But the key point here is that any theoretical toll needs to be this high precisely because the project cost is so enormous.

And as the numbers show, even a toll of that level is still only likely to cover half the estimated cost of a tunnel (in today’s numbers – which could well be far higher by the time such a thing came to be constructed).

So perhaps a more pressing question that seriously needs answering is: why has so much time and money been wasted on designing and trying to justify unaffordable solutions?

The approach to date suggests the team(s) behind these proposals are focused on the wrong task. They should be solving Auckland’s transport problem, which is two-fold: vehicle congestion (which time-of-use pricing would go a long way to addressing) and the missing modes (which need a fully accessible network, now).

Instead, they seem to be searching for a way to fund one (1) pre-determined engineering mega-project.

A better solution would be to start at the other end of the problem, and implement a (much lower than $9) toll for the existing crossing. Or just implement time-of-use charging, something the NIP recommends we do anyway – which is fairer, and far more preferable than a toll on one location only, aimed at one mega-project only.

And then see what impact that has.

That will give a much better idea of whether a new crossing is really needed or not.

A sensible approach to pricing would likely have a similar impact to the Northern Busway. In that case, just a few hundred million dollars invested in the busway changed travel patterns so significantly that most people crossing the bridge to the city at peak times now do so on a bus. And vehicle volumes are not just flat, but down.

Crucially, the “busway effect” effectively pushed back the need for another crossing by at least a few decades – saving the country billions in the process.

And that’s important, because as the NIP highlights, there’s currently a shortfall of nearly $200 billion of infrastructure initiatives that are not yet fully funded – including hospitals, schools, and ongoing maintenance.

So holding off the need to spend $20 billion on a new crossing for Auckland could help address a significant chunk of that national shortfall.

Lastly – and this angle has been missing from most of the current coverage – if we do need to build something sooner rather than later, the priority should be focusing on balancing the transport system.

And that means providing for the missing modes – walking and cycling and scooting (micromobility). But also, express lanes for rapid transit (which could be buses to begin with, with future potential for rail).

The question of the missing modes highlighted back in June 2021, when the then-Labour government suddenly announced a dedicated walking and cycling bridge option – perhaps in response to the modest proposal to liberate a lane for active modes – before abruptly cancelling it in October.

At that time, the estimated cost for the walking and cycling bridge was $685 million, a number that sounded quite large but paled in comparison to the average highway project.

But buried in the details, and never made properly clear at the time, was the suggestion from Waka Kotahi/ NZTA that for just an extra $1 billion, you could also make it a public transport bridge.

Sure, $1.685bn is still a large-ish budget (and of course it would be more now), but that more inclusive design would likely have been much more readily understood and even welcomed by the public. And, if combined with (time-variable, lower than $9) pricing on the existing system, we could have ‘solved’ the harbour crossing question for less than $2 billion.

That’s a tenth of what we’re currently looking at for a mega-engineered tunnel that may never break ground.

This more prudent and rational approach – price the existing assets, assess the missing modes, build solutions to balance the transport system – would align with some of the wider recommendations the Infrastructure Plan makes for transport investment:

Decision-makers must align projects with demand, prioritise low-cost solutions before major upgrades, stage big builds over time, and protect funding for maintaining and operating existing networks.

So yes, talk of a $9 toll is probably a shock to the system to many people. But perhaps now we’ll find out just how much people really want another crossing.

And now that this has everyone’s attention, we can finally start talking about affordable 21st-century options that give Aucklanders real transport choices and yet don’t cost the country a fortune.

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