Funding agreement doesn’t solve real issue

Earlier this year a group set up to gain cross spectrum consensus on how to fund the councils wish list of mostly road projects put out a discussion document on its preferred options and sought feedback from the public on its preferences. One of the disappointments was the Consensus Building Group (CBG) were not allowed to consider whether the projects on the list would actually help to make things better so just had to find funding for everything. They started with an initial list of options that included:

• general rates
• targeted rates
• development contributions
• tax increment financing
• regional fuel tax and road user charge/diesel levy
• tolling new roads
• road pricing on existing roads (i.e. some form of network charging or congestion charging)
• additional car parking charges
• visitor taxes
• airport departure tax
• asset sales

They then narrowed it down to two options

We looked at a number of aspects of the debate including the fact that the plans cater for a massive increase in roading capacity despite the fact that many vehicle metrics including kilometres driven, vehicle ownership and the number of people getting drivers licences are declining. We also had a great guest post from Peter Nunns that questioned whether we should be implementing road pricing in a revenue neutral way first to see what further impact that has on traffic volumes before committing to additional funding to build large new projects.

In the end these are the key points I made a submission about.

Of the two options presented I support option 2.

1. We should consider implementing road pricing in a cost neutral way in advance of the need for additional funding mechanisms so we can more accurately measure the impact it has on the transport network.
2. Before any additional funding scheme is implemented, all projects need to to be put through a robust process to properly determine their economic impact along with the impact they will have on the entire transport network, not just on the specific area they are located in. The projects then need to prioritised according to which ones have the most positive impact.
3. Additional funding should only be obtained for projects that will make a positive impact to the transport system and the exact impacts need to be made clear to the general public.
4. Assessing projects based on the how fast they can move a single occupant vehicle is not a good measure of success, we should instead be taking into consideration projects that add the most capacity to the network.

Today the CBG are releasing their recommendation and the most surprising thing is how strong the support is for road pricing with 78% of the responses favouring it in some form. I’m at the announcement on the issue now and will update more after I have had time to go through the details but here is the press release:

Unprecedented agreement calls for action by 2015 

Decisions by 2015 and an ongoing funding commitment from the government are at the heart of recommendations released today by the council commissioned group tasked with identifying alternative funding sources for Auckland’s transport.

‘Funding Auckland’s Transport Future’ identifies eight key recommendations that follow nine-months of deliberation by the group and reflect strong public feedback on the issue.

“My career in transport spans more than 50 years and never before have I witnessed Auckland make so much progress in just one year,” says Stewart Milne, Chair of the Consensus Building Group (CBG).

“This level of agreement between key stakeholders is unprecedented.”

Principally, the group has agreed that unless Aucklanders are prepared to accept significantly higher rates increases and heavier congestion, introducing some form of road pricing by 2021 will be required. According to the report, these decisions would need to be made by 2015.

The group has also strongly recommended that the government increase its funding for transport in Auckland and establish mechanisms that support an ongoing commitment to increased government funding.

“Recent commitments by the government are the first step toward securing long-term financial support for improvements to Auckland’s transport infrastructure,” says Stewart Milne.

In April this year, the group asked Aucklanders to consider two possible options for funding the 30-year transport programme and the response was overwhelming. Of the 1320 responses, 78 per cent were in favour of some form of road pricing.

“While the feedback indicates public support for road pricing it is our belief that detailed work is needed on the design of possible road pricing schemes and on addressing the social and economic impacts.”

The report will be formally received by Auckland Council’s governing body on 25 July.

The big question with road pricing is how it would be implemented. If done simply as an off ramp toll, as suggested this morning in the herald there is a risk that it simply shunts a lot of vehicle trips off the motorways and onto local roads which shifts the problem, not improves it. I will wait till I have more details before commenting much further though. Regardless of the outcome, perhaps the biggest benefit to all of this is process is that we have had groups from across the spectrum working together. They might not agree on the exact details but them working constructively together has likely been one of the aspects that helped to convince the government to help fund the City Rail Link.

The timing of this seems to have worked out well with our proposal announced last week of the Congestion Free Network. One of the biggest issues we have is that even with all of this extra funding it is still projected that almost all transport measures, including congestion will get worse. If we are spending $60 billion and things still get worse then we feel it is time we started looking much harder at what projects are on the wish list, whether they are actually doing anything to help the situation or in the case of many of them, likely making it worse. We think that at the very least we need to change the priorities of the projects, bringing forward those that create a true high quality alternative and giving people some real choice in how they travel.

We’ve already seen the massive impact that high quality PT routes can have with the Northern Busway leading to significant growth in bus patronage across the harbour bridge at peak times. The number crossing the bridge by bus increased from 18% in 2004 to 41% in 2011 and we expect we will see similar results from investment in other high quality alternatives. What’s more it would actually be cheaper than what is currently planned. The mode shift would likely see the justification for many of the expensive roading projects diminish greatly, either putting off the need for them, or eliminating it entirely. This in turn may reduce or even remove the need for additional funding (although we still support road pricing in a revenue neutral way).

ENDS

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