KEY POINTS:
National Party Transport spokesman Maurice Williamson has backtracked on yesterday's claims commuters faced bills of up to $50 a week for tolls on new motorways or similar "roads of national importance".
Mr Williamson this afternoon moved to "clarify" those remarks saying: "National will not be imposing $50 a
week tolls on motorists. While tolling is an option for major new roads, one which is of course also being considered by Labour, the figure of $50 a week is incorrect.
"When the $50 figure was suggested, I should have moved quickly to state that National does not envisage that to be a realistic weekly price for people to pay for road tolls. I am passionate about roading projects and unfortunately let my enthusiasm go unchecked.
"In the National Party we are in the business of reducing people's costs, not increasing them."
Yesterday, Mr Williamson said National had yet to decide which new roads might be built from extra loans of up to $750 million a year, possibly to be repaid from tolls, but he listed several possibilities in and around Auckland.
Transit NZ - now part of the Transport Agency - backed off imposing tolls on the Auckland ring route because of public opposition, but Mr Williamson said that was because it did not ask the right questions.
"If you go out to the public and say, 'Would you like to pay more?' no one is going to say yes to that," he said.
"You have to consult with the right questions, saying [tolls] will mean major reductions in fuel and time."
He believed an obstacle to public acceptance of tolls had been removed by a new law requiring all money raised from fuel taxes to be paid into the national land transport fund.
"I think New Zealanders will now say, 'Well okay, if it is going to provide a solution to a problem I face and you are not stealing my petrol tax, well then I'll go for it'."
Speaking on National Radio's Nine to Noon programme this morning, National's English, in an effective rebuke to Mr Williamson, said: "The spokesman got a bit exuberant when speaking about the $50."
Mr English agreed with host Kathryn Ryan when asked if Maurice Williamson had "got it wrong".
"There's no way we would be imposing a $50 cost on motorists. I think the level of funding that the Government is talking about on Puhoi which is about $2, that is more likely to be reasonable," Mr English said.
Mr English said "it was quite likely" that an alternative free route would be available.
He said a 20 year investment plan would be put together by National.
"The important point here is we have to go about this significant investment over the next decade in a very effective way because when you are going to spend, say in central government's case, $30 billion - if you do it badly there will be more costs for tax payers and if you do it well then we will get more infrastructure," Mr English said.
Transport Minister Annette King accused Mr Williamson of not thinking his toll plans through properly.
She said that even if the $365 million Albany-to-Puhoi toll road, to open early next year, had "maximised" use, a $2 toll would still pay only half its cost.
"Maurice Williamson misses out on the fact that you need to have a balance - that you cannot set a toll so high that people won't use the road," Ms King said.
But she said the Labour-led Government believed strongly there was a place for public-private partnerships (PPPs).
Mr Williamson listed these possible candidates for tolls:
Auckland's next crossing of the Waitemata Harbour (expected to cost at least $4 billion).
Auckland's motorway tunnels through Waterview on the western ring route ($1.9 billion).
A 19km motorway extension to Warkworth or beyond ($1 billion-plus).
Completion of the Waikato Expressway on State Highway 1 ($1 billion).
Kopu Bridge, on the way to Coromandel Peninsula ($32 million).
