The Auckland Harbour Bridge may once again be tolled. Photo / Michael Craig
Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop warned the Government may need to put a toll on the existing Auckland Harbour Bridge as it looks to find ways to fund the new Waitematā crossing, which could be a new bridge or a tunnel.
The new crossing will be tolled, but the Government is getting advice on whether the existing bridge needs to be tolled as well, to stop people using the old bridge to avoid the toll on the new crossing, resulting in a new crossing that hardly anyone used.
Both National and Labour support building a new crossing over the Waitematā Harbour, but neither has allocated funding for it.
The Infrastructure Commission’s Infrastructure Plan, released on Tuesday, pondered a $9 toll, raising up to $9 billion towards the new crossing. The Auckland Harbour Bridge was itself tolled when it opened, but tolls were removed in 1984. The $9 figure represents the original toll adjusted for inflation.
The commission also said the toll would need to be applied to the existing harbour bridge too.
Bishop said the new crossing would undoubtedly be tolled, the question was whether to toll the existing bridge.
“Whatever ends up being built [a bridge or a tunnel], will be tolled. The question is whether or not the existing connection is tolled – that’s a very big decision and we’re taking advice on it.
“There’s a range of decisions to be made about the funding of that project. It is in theory a project that should be able to pay for itself.”
Bishop noted it was one of the few connections in New Zealand where traffic volumes were so high, tolls could pay for the total cost of the project.
Labour has not yet come to a view on the toll. When the party left office, the Waitematā crossing was among the $200b worth of unfunded projects identified by officials – a figure seized upon by the incoming coalition.
Bishop appears to be readying a backdown on the delivery of National’s flagship transport policy, the $56b Roads of National Significance.
The 17 state highway projects were all meant to be started within the next decade. While work is underway on all the roads, the Government appears to be softening its commitment to building them at the times it had promised.
In 2024, the Herald released leaked costings showing the roads were tens of billions of dollars more expensive than costed by National at the election. More recent advice showed the Government was on track to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars on transport if its plans went unchanged.
The Infrastructure Commission’s plan singled out transport as an area of concern, noting that transport spending was well in excess of charges to people who used the road network. It also raised concerns that “mega-projects” crowded out investment elsewhere in the sector.
Last year, Bishop made a speech warning “hard choices lie ahead” for the programme.
On his way into the House on Tuesday, Bishop said he remained committed to the roads.
“The Roads of National Significance are big, nation-shaping projects the country needs and we’re committed to them. We’re making good progress on them,” he said.
Bishop said he agreed with the commission that the roads are expensive and successive injections of taxpayer funding had shifted the transport programme away from being one that was primarily paid for by users through fuel taxes and road-user charges.
“The transport system is meant to be user-pays. It isn’t. As successive Governments have pumped more and more Crown money into the transport system, so it is now really oversubscribed,” he said.
“There are trade-offs that come with Crown capital and we’ve got an enormous amount of demands on purse from health, through to education through to defence.
“I’ve said repeatedly over the last few months, they can’t all be built at once. The construction market market cannot cope with 17 roads being built at the same time.
“Some of them aren’t even ready to be built straight away anyway. What we’re developing is a long-term sequence and pipeline of transport projects.”
When asked whether all the roads would be started within 10 years, as promised, Bishop said that NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) had started on all the roads already, although the National Party’s manifesto suggests that the commencement date of projects refers to spades in the ground.
Asked whether it was fair to say the projects would not be built in the timeframe originally envisaged, Bishop said: “We always said they are long-term projects that shape the nation and drive long-term growth and productivity. They won’t all be built at the same time. They need to be sequenced and prioritised.”