It’s budget day and while we wait to find out what the government may or may not fund, we were asked by The Post for some policy ideas we’d like to see or not see in the budget in less than 200 words. Here’s what we provided:
More transport funding should be devolved to local government, especially Auckland, and immediately directed towards improving access, safety and transport choices.
For starters: immediately reset the “Roads of National Significance” programme. Stop pouring billions away on overscoped four-lane mega-highways like Warkworth to Te Hana (a $4b folly) and other zombie projects lurching towards us. Instead, invest in what’s nationally necessary: heaps of nimble, normal-sized safety and resilience improvements, like 2+1 roads, bypasses of towns, median barriers, safer intersections.
Skip the LNG terminal. Instead, empower New Zealanders by electrifying homes and businesses with subsidies for distributed solar and batteries. Invest in electric transport: buses, ferries, EVs and e-bikes.
Build the basics and give people fossil-fuel-free ways to get around. Deliver reliable world-class public transport for the 80% of us who live in cities: a bus or train every 10 minutes, all day, every route. Fast-track Auckland’s Northwest busway and other rapid transit like Dominion Rd light rail. Rapidly roll out full bike networks in every city for all-ages access. Revive intercity rail.
Lastly, don’t sink billions into costly car tunnels under the Waitematā! Get cracking on an iconic bridge that frees up the missing modes: walking, cycling, buses and rail.
For anyone who reads our posts regularly enough, most of this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise thought it’s hard to see any of it happening under this government.
As for what we might actually see in the budget – in recent years it’s become quite common for the government to announce some of their major policies ahead of the budget. For example, last year additional funding for rail upgrades, including funding specifically for the Auckland and Wellington metro networks was announced a few days ahead of the budget. There haven’t been any specific announcements related to transport but Prime Minister Chris Luxon has signalled that capital spending is increasing to $5.7 billion, up from a previously planned $3.5 billion.
We don’t know how much of that capital spending is transport related but in recent years governments of both stripes have increasingly been spending up large on transport. As you can see, funding for roading has increasingly been sourced from loans or grants from the government. Note the big jump in rail in 2025/26 is largely made up of asset transfers related to the CRL.
Last night Winston Peters also revealed that rail is getting a funding boost.
When asked this afternoon whether Thursday’s Budget was an election winner, Peters said his party was happy with it.
“Rail is going to look great, racing is going to look great and foreign affairs has been preserved.
“So three out of three ain’t bad.”
Nicola Willis was asked if it was the case that there was a significant investment in rail in the budget, which she confirmed.
“Yes, we’ve got a track record of investing in rail, and to see the nature of that investment, you’ll have to wait one more sleep.”
Peters confirmed to The Post rail was set to get capital and operational expenditure increases.
It seems that most likely, any funding for rail would be similar to what we’ve seen before, more funding to maintain and renew the existing network. But who knows, maybe they could surprise us and announce funding to progress the Marsden Point branch line or for electrifying the network between Auckland and Tauranga – both projects have been progressed in recent years with business cases.
Presumably we’ll also see more funding pumped in to prop up the Roads of National Significance. The most likely might be money towards the Warkworth to Te Hana project – which Connor’s OIA requests have helped to reveal that the government are looking to pump in money to help bring the PPP cost down.
What do you think we’ll see today from the budget?
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Maybe it is a bit of a ‘the grass is greener’ situation, but when talking to my friends in Europe (France, Spain, Germany) I always come away feeling like our country doesn’t really invest much in its people. Living in NZ can come to feel like working for a company that calls ‘tea and coffee in the break room’ a staff benefit, as you look over at your friends working at companies that give 6 weeks holiday, free lunches on Fridays, and trips all over the place to attend conferences and upskill.
Yes companies have become very cheap here indeed. Even Friday drinks, work lunches, etc have disappeared in most instances.
The rail announcement could be interesting, but like you say it will probably be something boring. My hope is Avondale to Southdown with commuter trains from Onehunga to City.
If Winston is talking about it , its got to be the Marsden Point link. Unless they are going to twist ferry costs into rail somehow.
Ferry + Rail = Frail, it’s what all the 81-year-old MPs are doing these days
Recall how Light Rail was destroyed because we wasted time discussing tunnelling?
Now this government has repeated the previous government’s fluff up.
We don’t really need a new bridge unless we move the sugar factory to the main port, and can build a flatter, more logical version of The Harbour Bridge.
Otherwise NZTA could just get off their lazy bums and open up the current bridge for walking a cycling.
Propose Light Rail to replace the Northern Busway, and give the North Shore the dream of functional rail, which was taken from them during the Second World War (taken from all of us).
We could also propose light rail for the Far East, because a Bus Way loses efficiency at peak hours, and we need to believe that our population will increase.
Note: we become a real city when we contain five million city dwellers. This will require many more sensible apartment builds, in the ten to twelve level range. alla OCKHAM & SIMPLICITY BUILDING.
Social Housing needs to be reintegrated as it previously was, but with better community construction within, not just more roads, more cars and more garages.
I attended 275 Maangere Day yesterday, and it was amazing to be in the middle of that carpark, safe from cars. But Maangere Town Centre is a desert, and deserves better public transport…light rail!
And yes I know that our government and Auckland Council does not have any money left, but if we actually want to address the congestion cost to our supercity, we need to force people out of cars.
We need to make Public Transport faster than an aeroplane, faster than sound, faster than light, faster than a rocketship…then we can get those silly persons out of their wheelchairs (cars ARE wheelchairs) and onto to a ferry, with a gentle transfer to a train, and a gentler transfer to light rail.
bah humbug
I have seen “THE BRIDGE” proposal and wonder just how dumb we can get. Yes Auckland is the City of Sails but to put two giant sail like structures on a bridge that crosses from Central Auckland to Northcote screams lie big mistake. The current proposal is so bad it suggests a secret wish to have a tunnel built instead.
The biggest disaster of all is the lack of direct rail connection from the City to the North Shore and the “to expensive” Manukau Airport Onehunga Heavy rail loop. It was half done and then deemed to expensive. If people can see the benefits of a bus lane that will take 80-100 people per bus every 15mins why can they not see that on rail that could be 250 people seated and up to another 500 more standing on a similar 15min schedule.
The Problem of rail on the North Shore is two fold. While the South, East and West is relatively flat the North is not. The cost of a surface line would have massive purchase issues because of the land values and “environmental issues”. But before another BIG BRIDGE Auckland needs to make sure that a rail option can be included before starting.
In the South there are slightly fewer issues. Cost remains a big one. Sadly Onehunga Airport via Mangere Bridge was never going to be British Rail straight without a big capitol investment for realignment.
My suggestion is let the million odd people of Auckland buy the passenger service Manukau – Airport – Onehunga . Not literally, buy a non refundable bond like a Motat Family Pass. It is still possible to improve the Western line with planning that line could go further into the west making a connection somewhere near state hwy 18. Putting a station within 50m of the westgate shopping city with stops behind Massey. The bus connections to Helensville could then link to Swanson – Massey – Westgate. Auckland really needed a good civil engineer a long time ago.
Double tracking and grade separating the Penrose-Onehunga branch line, and extending it to the Airport, would cost on the order of $6-10 billion. For that cost, you could build light rail from Wynyard Quarter to the Airport via Mt Roskill AND the Airport-Manukau-Botany rapid transit corridor as light rail, providing far more frequent and attractive service (every 4 minutes at peak) than a train every 15 minutes
Then it will never happen. This thought process is exactly what sunk light rail when Labour tried to get it last time. It’s a mixed up way of using light rail that gives you a halfway house on a lot of things. Why can’t we just build it for what it is good for.
if cost-efficiency is the priority for rail mass transit all the way to Mangere and the airport, then surface light rail *is* the answer and sucking up about capacity and travel times (that would only be 5 minutes slower than heavy rail from the airport to midtown anyway) is what we have to do. If you want separation of Isthmus trams and airport rail/metro, it’s gonna cost several times more.
using the NZTA’s cost projections per km for heavy rail (from page 52 of this https://fyi.org.nz/request/18392/response/70939/attach/5/Auckland%20Rapid%20Transit%20Plan%20Stage%201%203%20Summary%20Report.pdf) it would be:
– 3.6km from Penrose to Onehunga double-tracked and elevated or trenched at $400-900M per km: $1.4B to $3.3B
– 7.6km from Onehunga to The Landing (where it would need to tunnel under the second runway), elevated at $400M per km: $3.0B
– 2.0km from The Landing to the Airpor terminal station, tunnelled at $900M-$1B per km: $1.8B to $2B
all up cost of $6.2B to $8.3B, not including enhanced bus, BRT, or LRT for Dominion Rd which could add i assume an extra billion or two on top of that?
compared to the 2016 surface light rail plan
– from Wynyard Quarter to Hillsborough, 12km at-grade at $100M per km: $1.2B (though I think the IRL estimate was $1.8B?)
– from Hillsborough to Onehunga, 3km mix of elevated and surface, let’s go with the elevated cost per km of $200M: $0.6B
– from Onehunga to Mangere TC, 5km elevated at $200M per km: $1.0B
– from Mangere TC to the Airport, 5km at-grade at $100M per km: $0.5B
for a total of $3.3B to $3.9B
light metro on the same route as light rail, but entirely tunnelled from Wynyard Quarter to Onehunga (15km at $450-650M per km = $6.8B to $9.1B) then elevated to The Landing (7.6km at $300M per km = $2.3B) and trenched to the Airport terminal (2.0km at $450M per km = $0.9B) would come in at $10B to $12.3B
Avondale-Southdown heavy rail, assuming all 13km were at-grade ($250M per km) it would cost around $3.3 billion, but since the cited cost estimates were around double that — $6B — I assume they’re factoring in earthworks on the Hillsborough-Onehunga downhill, trenching and possible elevated sections (definitely cannot see the bit that runs through the north side of Onehunga being at-grade). In fact only the run from Avondale to Hayr Road seems like it would be just laying-tracks at-grade
A Puhinui-Airport branch, aside from doing literally nothing to improve mass transit service to the Mangere suburbs, would still have hefty costs. you could build the whole Airport to Botany busway corridor for that price tag.
Grade-separating Wiri junction= possibly up to $100 million
5.7km at-grade or elevated ($250M-400M per km) = $1.425B to $2.28B
2km elevated or tunnelled ($400–$1000M per km)= $0.8B to $2B
total cost = $2.33–4.38 billion
What does NZTA know about building railways?
@anon that’s beside the point, having a consistent reference for the differing costs of heavy rail, light rail, and light metro is beneficial for discourse because otherwise proponents of heavy rail will cite outdated lowball heavy rail costs per km while giving light rail the highest cost per km in order to skew and misrepresent the issue in their favour.
it is factual to say that there is no reality in which heavy rail to Mangere and the Airport would be cheaper than surface light rail.
at which point the discussion probably swings to ‘is a 5 minute faster travel time worth twice or three times the cost?’
How detailed are their cost estimates?
i don’t know, but i have not found other single sources with a consistent set of cost per km estimates for different rapid transit modes. again, consistency is valuable, especially when some people like to claim Avondale-Southdown heavy rail would cost $100 million but surface light rail on Dominion Rd would cost “$15 billion”.
if you have a source for cost estimates for light rail and heavy rail that you claim is more reliable i should be interested in seeing it
NZ would need to up its steel production or imports I think
regardless of that, the point still stands that surface light rail is in all likelihood going to be the cheapest way to deliver rapid transit to Mt Roskill, Mangere, and the Airport regardless of whether it’s “trying to do too many jobs at once”
the question is would the claimed advantages of separating the isthmus & Mangere sections into two separate projects and modes (light rail & heavy rail) be worth 2x-3x the cost of a “jack of all trades” surface light rail option?
I still think better to extend the Wynyard Quarter tramline to make an inner city loop a la OuterLink replacement
Another thing is airport heavy rail wouldn’t just stop at Penrose. It would have to rebuild Penrose station and build a new junction north of there, the current thing is a single track coming off the wrong side which makes Onehunga trains run the wrong way under the Great South Road Bridge. So rebuild that bridge too.
Then theres the question of where the hell the trains go after that. Remember they just cut half the trains off the Otahuhu to Newmarket section of the CRL train plan, because the thing didn’t work.
the alternate proposal was to scrap the current Penrose–Te Papapa stretch of track, build a new flying junction south (around where the Mainfreight/Daily Freight/Chemcouriers warehouses are) of Penrose Station and run elevated track across the northern carparks and north side of Mt Smart Stadium, before returning to the trenched alignment at Te Papapa station. At the time it was studied it would have been roughly $100M more expensive than the ‘trench the existing alignment’ option (https://at.govt.nz/media/1927314/draft-smart-indicative-business-case-appendix-h.pdf)
Newmarket junction is a problematic point because I don’t see any simple way to grade-separate such a tight and constrained junction without major disruption. I have seen at least one person claim that extending the triple-tracking at Newmarket Station south to Remuera to give trains more opportunities to ‘merge’ tracks could help matters.
But, to be fair, I believe most of the issues with the Southern Line change were to do with Westfield Junction, as the red line trains terminating at Newmarket will still have to traverse the Newmarket junction
Wow, more for one road than all of the rail program:
Transport Minister Chris Bishop has announced $1.77 billion will spent on extending the four-lane Waikato Expressway (SH1) 16 kilometres from Cambridge to Piarere Road.
“This project has been talked about for years. Now we’re getting on with it,” Bishop said.
The government is also putting $1.075 billion into KiwiRail’s network from 2027-2030 and $107m into rail upgrades in cities.
Cost of living budget suggestion: central govt reallocates RoNS funding to subsidise CRL payback to lower Auckland rates
Yes. Good idea.
Well if Waikato gets its road then Northland should get its road. Warkworth to Te Hana is on!
Well if Auckland has an airport, then Ahipara should get one, too!
Odds on their next fuel crisis response being a scheme to generate electricity with diesel