Budget 2006: Cash boost puts road projects into top gear

Click here for graphic showing the roading projects.

Key roading projects in Auckland and elsewhere have received most of a $1.3 billion funding boost that wipes out a tax shortfall from shrinking petrol sales.

A separate announcement today will reveal funding for projects in Waikato worth an extra $200 million.

The Government has stolen the thunder from its opponents by promising to spend $13.4 billion over five years on land transport - a sum $300 million greater than all it will reap from fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen's Budget has answered the dreams of business and motoring groups such as the Automobile Association, which have long demanded all fuel taxes diverted to the Consolidated Fund be spent on roads and other land transport.

"The taxpayer no longer has a hand in the motorist's pocket," Dr Cullen said.

But Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee chairman Joel Cayford slated the document as "a smokestack Budget - all about world-class roads and third-rate public transport for Auckland".

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons rose in Parliament to call it a "mad petrol-headed, tarmac-focused" Budget designed for a flat Earth by ignoring likely limits to oil supplies and the effects of global climate change.

Dr Cullen agreed that the earth would be flattened - behind road-building bulldozers.

It was a reduced tax take from declining fuel sales - raising fears of a $685 million funding deficit - which prompted Transit NZ in February to announce delays of two to three years to many large roading projects.

The Government, which promised at the time to make up the shortfall, disclosed yesterday that the overall deficit in the National Land Transport Fund had swollen to $862 million.

Yesterday it pledged not only to plug that gap, mainly from the sale of Australian assets by Government electricity company Meridian, but also to add $425 million to accelerate key roading projects - after raising up to $1 billion from infrastructure bonds. These include:

* A duplicate Mangere bridge on Auckland's western ring route, now due to be "substantially" completed by 2011 for $205 million, in time to carry Rugby World Cup visitors from the airport.

* Widening State Highway 1 and adding traffic lights through a notorious bottleneck in Warkworth - the site last month of a angry meeting of residents calling for Transit to build more roads.

* Advance design work to make construction starts possible by 2011 for bypasses of Huntly, Cambridge and Rangiriri, which were previously off the forecasting radar.

* A possible 2011 construction start for a replacement Kopu bridge at the foot of the Coromandel Peninsula, which had previously been deferred until 2014.

* A $94 million eastern bypass of Taupo, previously kicked off the list but now expected to open by 2011, subject to joint district council funding.

A second Tauranga Harbour Bridge will also be build for $240 million by 2011 without a toll component which was abolished in a post-election agreement with New Zealand First.

Design work should be complete by then for a start on a $189 million motorway east of the city.

The Budget did not include a separate joint funding package to be announced today for extra Waikato roading projects, although an expected $200 million is unlikely to satisfy regional transport leaders.

Hamilton City transport chairman Dave Macpherson said at least $500 million more was needed for projects to keep traffic flowing through the region, linchpin of a "golden triangle" of economic activity between Auckland and the Bay of Plenty.

Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard and airport company chief executive Don Huse were both thrilled a duplicate Mangere bridge would be in place by 2011 to join other components of the western ring route.

But Mr Hubbard said it still seemed some level of tolling would be needed to fill a funding gap to allow a 5km motorway extension of the route through Waterview to be built with appropriate mitigation such as cut-and-cover tunnels. He was also pleased about promised progress on a four-lane Waikato Expressway, given that Auckland and Hamilton were increasingly "joined at the hip" economically.

"And a bit of icing for Aucklanders has to be fixing up the Kopu bridge."

The Budget contained little or nothing to fix Auckland's public transport problems, although Dr Cullen said the Government would continue to work with the region on these.

"This will include how best to enable local authorities to meet their contributions to local land transport costs," he said.

"At the same time, it is likely that further investment into the rail system will be required to ensure the maintenance of a national network." Transport Minister Annette King said funding would work to a rolling five-year plan, reviewable every two years.

Previously, funding was only guaranteed in a one-year block, she said.

"We wanted to ensure that we stopped the stop-go approach to land transport planning in New Zealand. "It means that there can be some certainty around that planning."