Transport policy Q&A: Pete Hodgson

Pete Hodgson says Labour wants a safe, integrated and efficient transport system "as early as we can". Picture / Richard Robinson

The Herald invited politicians to answer questions at a range of policy forums - today's focus is on transport, a major concern for many Herald readers, especially in Auckland.

Below are edited highlights of the 45-minute question and answer session with Transport Minister Pete Hodgson.

We have worse traffic jams in Auckland now than we did six years ago. What have you been up to?

Well, we certainly haven't failed. We knew problems existed in the 90s due to lack of funding and a bunch of planning problems, centred around hold-ups in the Environment Courts. We knew also they were due to a lack of integration and, relatively speaking, a lack of emphasis on public transport.

So we are coming out of an era in which the solution had to be a motorway, but the motorways themselves were not being built.

When we came into Government the larger projects going on in Auckland totalled $130 million worth and as we sit here today, the large projects - on precisely the same criteria - total just over 10 times that at $1.3 billion.

To what extent were some of those projects planned under the previous Administration?

Some of them were planned but hadn't started. The North Shore busway is an example. It had been planned for years actually, but when we became the Government it had not been funded, it had not been consented and the investigation itself was incomplete. So we had to finish the investigation, price the project, get the consent, get it in to the transport programme, and we have. It's being built.

What about spending?

If you want to talk about overall funding increases since we've been in the Government, they are up by just over 80 per cent. We expect, with the economy growing well, our Government - any Government - to increase funding and so the more arduous task for us is to pass the test of "what's happening to your funding as a percentage of GDP?" When we came in it was just under 1 per cent of GDP. We are currently passing through 1.3. We are heading off to 1.55. The OECD average is 1.3 per cent. So we are moving at last from being behind the eight-ball to being at the eight-ball and moving forward. A disproportionate amount of that increase has gone to Auckland.

Maurice Williamson says Auckland's roading network was planned decades ago and never completed and that the first priority of the Government should be to make sure that roading network is properly completed so the city can function. What's your answer to that?

I don't think that you should seek in any city to do one thing in its entirety, one entire project, before you begin on another. I think the idea of completing a motorway whilst paying no attention at all to rail or buses or ferries, for that matter, is a silly idea.

I think the idea of putting all the money into roading whilst not paying any attention to integrating ticketing - goodness knows we need it - is simply unhelpful.

Indeed, I would go further and say had there not been an increase in passenger transport services in this city we would have seen a far greater snarl-up than we have now. I would make the same comment to the Greens, who say they want to put roading on hold in order to do full double-tracking modification of the railways. You try and make progress on multiple fronts. So we're keen to continue with the double tracking, we're keen continue with the motorways, we're keen to get the North Shore busway completed.

The Greens say if you make a big hit on public transport you will reduce demand for roads. After that you could see what roads still need building.

I do understand that if you put in a lot of effort into public transport you will relieve road congestion.

What's more, you don't need to take vast numbers of people out of their cars and into buses for there to be quite a considerable improvement in the motorway's efficiency.

But I think that where we differ from the Greens is they think the western ring route might not need completion. I don't. Auckland needs its bypass. The congestion around Spaghetti Junction and the first part of the Southern Motorway has to have some relief.

You just can't keep adding lanes to the existing roads. It is far smarter to link up the south and the west and produce an alternative route around - not through - Auckland. I must say in the same breath, I don't see a situation arising where some day a road from the south would head out east, swing through the eastern suburbs and across the basin and into town or perhaps through a tunnel to arrive magically on the North Shore, in Bayswater or some place.

I simply don't see a third route through Auckland. I suggest that two routes though Auckland City in a city of one, two or three million is probably about normal - three or four routes is probably not. The costs of building routes through the eastern suburbs are just awful.

If Labour is in coalition with the Greens would you continue to build and fund State Highway 20?

Yes, it's in the state highway programme and Transit is announcing what to do with the extra $500 million. A significant proportion is going into SH20 and so we are really rather keen to get it finished and more and more finished as we go.

We don't think the eastern route is likely to be advanced at any time. We do think the future lies in much better public transport, so we will continue to operate on those fronts: roads, rail, motorways.

Now of course if the Greens form a coalition with the Government they will seek to have their influence and that's a part of politics.

Without wanting to appear arrogant we expect to be a major party after the election. We expect the Greens will do well and that they may well form some arrangement with us, including the possibility of a coalition.

I must say the Greens already influence Labour's transport policy. It is their number one issue. Jeanette [Fitzsimons] and I meet on a monthly basis to discuss a predetermined agenda and have done so very happily.

We do have differences and we meet in order to resolve or agree on our differences.

What about completing works on State Highway 1, from Auckland to Hamilton?

Of the $500 million from Transit most of it is going to state highways, some of it is going to Auckland railways. In the state-highway sector most of it is going to the western ring route and most of the rest is going to the [Waikato] Expressway.

In addition, the Government has come to the view that for either very big projects such as the western ring route or for projects such as Waikato and Tauranga we have entered into this process that has been so successful in 2003.

It has led to a higher level of relationship between local and central government which is enormously powerful and which continues to this day.

That process went on in Wellington and last week you saw the results of that. About four or five weeks ago we began it in Waikato.

What's your view on building another harbour crossing?

The truth is my view doesn't matter. The history of this town is littered with people who have views that are interesting bits of history but that's all they are.

Light rail views date back to the 1920s. It's still not built.

But I suspect sooner or later a third crossing will be needed. I can't imagine a future where it is unlikely to be needed. If the regional growth strategy is to hold and if Auckland is to become still more concentrated then there will need to be a great capacity across the water. But I think the more important question is: Should it be built what will run in it? Because the third harbour crossing presents a very significant opportunity for bus, train and maybe even cycleway services - but that might be a bit imaginative of me - and we need to start thinking quite carefully as we approach the third-bridge decision.

Will the western ring route become a main route through the city?

It will, otherwise you wouldn't bother building it. It's going to be four lanes in some parts and eight lanes on parts of the Northwestern motorway. It will be a major route and it will delay the need for a third harbour crossing. But if you did have a third harbour crossing, do you think therefore we will have another motorway line-up to the North Shore - and if so, through which suburb? I suspect we're not and that's why I want to start thinking around what's going to flow through that tunnel.

Should we have more toll roads to get some projects under way?

In the beginning when we came into Government there was no legal way to have the toll roads but we passed a law to let it happen.

We went through a group of people in and around Auckland asking, "Would you like to have this done now with tolling or done later without?" They gave me the high level of support I needed for the law's approval and it got done.

At the end of last year and then last week in Tauranga we did another one and Transit will explore to what extent tolling might be part of the western motorway solution. Transit is not clear on the details yet. Tolls can occur so long as there is a freely available alternative route - like down the hill into Waiwera and up again - and so long as there is a high level of community support.

But there are other forms of road pricing. In January we began quite a large and expensive study centred on Auckland to ask what form of road pricing, if any, would be any good to Auckland in the future.

Road pricing comes in many forms, from pricing every 2km of the motorway through to putting up parking charges.

That study is due for completion in November. As we get closer to it and stuff starts popping out, we will start sharing it with local authorities and dropping it into the public arena for some comment. I think we will see a useful and interesting road-pricing debate and there will be social economic costs and benefits all over the place.

How would you reduce the road toll?

The toll has stopped dropping for a couple of years. There are several areas in which we might be able to make some progress.

We are now able to build safer roads, faster. And we have not paid particular attention to our fleet as far as safety is concerned. I'm under specific instructions to look afresh at that, and to see if our number of imports need to be tightened.

Raising the driving age was looked at four or five years ago. It was quite evidently opposed by a number of people on the grounds it was hard on rural areas and that teenagers become completely unsafe if they have to walk home and then something else might happen. But there is no doubt that thought should be given to compulsory defensive driving.

The police are halfway through a process whereby they are blood testing every accident victim and testing for non-alcohol drugs. They're doing that because we don't know to what extent other non-alcohol drugs are having an effect.

And then of course there's education.

Can you give us a snapshot of what your transport policy would be if you were in Government for the next three years?

The Government's intention is to have a safe, integrated and efficient transport system for the future of New Zealand as early as we can, which is why you've got, by any measure, unprecedented funding in appropriate areas.

We are determined that human health and safety, environment considerations, personal mobility and flexibility, as well as the overriding importance of the economy, should be measured together.

And that we move away from the situation where once a month a board member for Transit wanders down a list of roading projects ranked on a spending per cost ratio, and draws a line. We have to be able to develop systems more intelligently than that.

Finally I would say the system has to be built for the future. We have to build a system where buses are high tech and they do call teenagers with cellphones to tell them they're only so many minutes away or whatever.