Brian Rudman: Councils cry foul on road package

COMMENT

Tomorrow the kids go back to school and congestion returns to Auckland's roads. With more than 40 per cent of peak-hour traffic involved in ferrying children back and forth to school, the quick fix to our traffic woes seems blindingly obvious.

Instead of planning $3 billion in new highways, we should be forcing the little darlings to shed a bit of excess fat and walk or bike to school like we did. And if that fails, we could at least try bribing the parents to keep the garage locked with offers of free student bus travel.

But apart from North Shore City, which is trying out various carless alternatives to school travel, the rest of the region's politicians seem fixated on the more roads, more rail and, above all, more money mode.

Over the next week or so, local politicians will vote on recommendations the council chief executives' forum has come up with in response to the Government's pre-Christmas 10-year $1.62 billion transport package for Auckland.

The money is on top of the $4.2 million already budgeted for transport spending over that period.

The CEOs' reports are not out yet, but the word is that they say, thanks, but it's not enough. The top-up, say the bureaucrats, represents only 60 per cent of what is needed.

Their solution is for Wellington to give Auckland a freer hand in the form of road pricing. The Government supports tolling on new roads but local officials want the power to go further. They dream of reinstating tolls on the harbour bridge and/or charging everyone going in and out of Auckland city.

They also want the proposed 5.6c a litre new petrol tax to be introduced earlier than the Government's proposed April 2005 start date. The Government has said there is a surplus in the road accounts already able to fund new Auckland projects once they get the necessary approvals. But the chief executives want the money to start flowing now.

They're also objecting to the Government's carrot-and-stick negotiating style - and they have a point. When the package was announced last month by Prime Minister Helen Clark, the funding package was made conditional on the region reviewing key strategy documents such as the regional land transport strategy and various district schemes.

The reasoning behind that was understandable. The Government wanted to ensure the extra cash was not frittered away on pet roading projects but went instead into an integrated transport network giving full consideration to, for example, passenger transport solutions.

The Government even indicated a willingness to consider changes to the Resource Management Act to allow the fast-tracking of planning hearings. The chief executives are worried that such fast-tracking could compromise and undermine the principles and processes of the RMA.

They also consider it nigh on impossible to complete the required review of the various council's district plans, the regional policy statement and the regional land transport strategy and get Government approval in time for the money to start flowing by mid-2005.

It's a fair point. After all, the last review of the regional land transport strategy, from memory, took about eight years. So the CEOs want the link between new funding and the plan reviews cut.

The bureaucrats are also upset that the functions and activities of the three central Government transport agencies, Transfund, Transit and Trackco, have been left outside the proposed new umbrella organisation, Auckland Regional Transport Authority.

The detailed functions of this new body are still hazy, but planning and co-ordinating the regional transport programme is its overall brief.

Transfund is the funding agency through which Government transport grants are funnelled, Transit builds state highways, and Trackco has been recently formed to own the rail network. The Government is insisting on keeping these bodies intact and outside ARTA in order to maintain the integrity of the national networks.

But the CEOs argue that an integrated solution to Auckland's transport problems needs the Auckland portions of these three key players to be inside ARTA. At the very least, there should be contracts between ARTA and the Government agencies, committing the latter to backing regional priorities.

The good news is that the region's usually warring councils seem to be working as a team. Agreeing with the Government in time for the planned July start-up of ARTA is the next hurdle.