North Shore proposes regional transport body

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Concern that there are too many players on the field of passenger transport improvement has prompted the North Shore City Council to call for a regional transport body.

The council is working on a $130 million Rapid Bus Transit Project and the Auckland and Waitakere City Councils want to take over suburban passenger rail services.

But proceeding on a project-by-project basis and developing a proliferation of agreements is not the way to deliver improvements, said North Shore Mayor George Wood.

He said yesterday that each project seemed to be pursuing funding on an individual basis.

This presented a risk that the outcome would yield pieces of a passenger transport jigsaw but not the whole picture.

Too many authorities and agencies were trying to build a transport network without the certainty of being able to fund the large capital and operating costs.

Mr Wood said demands of developing passenger transport were absorbing more and more councils' resources and would only increase as the region's population continued to grow.

Councils seeking funding are dealing with Transfund, as well as Infrastructure Auckland, and Mr Wood said he believed a state-owned enterprise would have difficulty entering into a partnership with a local council to run a transport system.

The Auckland Regional Council is prohibited from owning and providing passenger transport infrastructure.