Fixing the National Land Transport Fund

As discussed in this morning’s post, the Labour/Green confidence and supply agreement will lead to major change in transport investment priorities going forwards. Especially the following: National Land Transport Fund spending will be reprioritised to increase the investment in rail infrastructure in cities and regions, and cycling and walking.…
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Now a $7 billion shortfall

As well as revealing that the government would be making an announcement on road pricing this week, Mayor Phil Goff also made another interesting comment in relation to transport in his interview on The Nation on the weekend. He mentioned that the funding shortfall from ATAP over the first decade has risen from $4 billion to $7 billion.…
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Flashback Saturday: Local roads getting screwed over

This post originally appeared in May 2012. NZTA is funded from petrol tax and road user charges, which obviously comes from cars, trucks, vans and buses using fuel (or travelling kilometres) along our roading network. The theory is that this creates a relatively ‘user pays’ situation, with money raised from road users being spent on projects that benefit road users (including public transport, walking and cycling, which obviously reduce the number of cars that would otherwise be on the road).…
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Looking closer at the GPS

There has been an impression over the past while about how the government has adopted a more conciliatory approach to transport in Auckland. In some respects this is true, as they’re no longer getting in the way of quickly progressing the City Rail Link, they stumped up the Urban Cycleway Fund which is delivering some fantastic projects, and through ATAP there’s now alignment between the council and government on Auckland’s future transport needs including expanding the rapid transit network and a more open mind to road pricing.…
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Govt silly to reject Regional Fuel Tax

Last Thursday Finance Minister Steven Joyce announced that the government was “ruling out” using a regional fuel tax as one way to fill the $4 billion transport funding gap that was identified by ATAP. He noted a few reasons for this decision: And second, I stress that we are not interested in introducing a regional fuel tax.…
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Transport Spending in NZ in 2016

More was spent on transport in Auckland during the last financial year (to end of June 2016) than any time in the past, at least in nominal values. Based on the NZTA’s funding data, $1.435 billion was spent in the region in the year to June-2016, up slightly from $1.414 billion spent in the 2015 financial year.…
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