Editorial: Toll roading best to get city moving

Inch by inch, congested traffic in Auckland is approaching the most likely solution - road tolls. A proposal to extend the Northern Motorway as a tolled road from Orewa to Puhoi has just been endorsed by a panel set up by Transit New Zealand to hear public objections. A reduced, and much more realistic, design was outlined yesterday for the highway through Auckland's eastern suburbs. It is plainly intended to attract private finance recoverable from tolls. And private consultants have issued a report calling for the Government to borrow $2.4 billion to build four national roading projects calculated to be of particular economic value. Once roads are financed by debt, tolls are around the corner.

Toll, of course, remains a four-letter word. Politicians prefer the terms "congestion charges" or "traffic demand management". Motorists quite naturally do not welcome the prospect of paying for use of any part of the road network, particularly when they know they already pay more in fuel taxes than is invested in additional roads. Even when the project is simply not a high enough priority for public roading funds, as is the case with the Northern Motorway extension, tolls are not popular. Only 210 of 656 submissions to Transit's panel unreservedly supported the tolled alternative. Energetic roading proponents such as Auckland Mayor John Banks are still reluctant to utter the T word, even when they look to private investors for their scheme, as Mr Banks did yesterday. But the implication was clear.

His eastern corridor scheme has been scaled back to a simple road, a single lane in each direction across Hobson Bay, dovetailing with Tamaki Drive to feed traffic into the city centre. It no longer includes a busway and other accoutrements of the Government's land transport policy and it no longer aims to be a major east-west thoroughfare connecting to State Highway 16. The steering committee now accepts that its proposal is not a national priority and has no prospect of attracting Government funds. Either the councils borrow the money or they invite private investment, which usually means the road will be privately built and operated for as long as it takes to pay back its financiers with a reasonable profit.

By reducing the original multi-laned highway to a single lane in each direction, the champions of the eastern corridor appear to have erred in the opposite direction. The road as now designed looks too small for the traffic it would be likely to attract as a freeway, which points to the fact that it is not to be a freeway, not for a while at least.

A single lane is probably sufficient for the paying traffic it could attract from the free alternative routes - Remuera Rd and Tamaki Drive. But it will need to be constructed in such a way that it can readily be widened if demand increases. And demand might well increase even as it remains tolled.

Aucklanders might take to tolls more readily than anyone suspects. When motorists are given the opportunity to pay a few dollars to avoid sitting in congestion and missing an appointment or losing earning time, quite a number will pay up. And as they become accustomed to the choice they will want to have it available more widely. In time, tolls may be placed on at least one lane of most major arteries. The benefit will not be limited to those prepared to pay, for the free lanes, too, will be a little less congested.

Initial resistance to tolls might be quickly overcome if people consider the cost of congestion. The toll should be set against the price of petrol wasted over the time it takes to crawl the same distance. And the cost to the country of inadequate roading is severe, as the report from Allen Consulting Group and Infometrics yesterday reminded us. They estimated that just four projects - one each in Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington plus more passing bays on the main highways - would boost the economy by $1 billion a year. While it estimates that all could be funded by public debt, private investment and tolls would produce more efficient road use. Its time is coming.