Christopher Luxon campaigning on doubling the Mt Victoria Tunnel.
The National Party campaigned on having “spades in the ground” to build Wellington’s new Mt Victoria Tunnel, but Infrastructure and Transport Minister Chris Bishop has opened the door to delaying the build if new road charges prove the project to be unnecessary.
Earlier remarks from Bishop hinted the Government might cancel the project completely, but these were later clarified.
“The second Mt Victoria Tunnel is a Government priority and a project we’re committed to. We are not cancelling it.
“I’ve been clear for some months now that there is important sequencing and prioritisation work underway on the Roads of National Significance programme, and I’ll have more to say about that soon,” he said.
Bishop’s remarks were also walked back by Finance Minister Nicola Willis, who said the tunnel was “all go”, although the future of a new tunnel on The Terrace, which, along with the Mt Victoria tunnel is part of the $3.8 billion project to ease congestion in the capital, seems less secure.
The Infrastructure Commission’s Infrastructure Plan told the Government it should make better use of existing infrastructure before building new things. One way of doing this is to introduce time-of-use or congestion charging to encourage motorists to travel at different times, or to cycle or bus instead of driving.
The charges reduce demand on roads, meaning new infrastructure might not be needed. They can also be unpopular because they charge motorists to travel places where it had previously been free.
Asked whether the Government would introduce time-of-use charging or other demand-management tools in Wellington before building new tunnels to see whether they were still needed, Bishop said “that’s an option under consideration”.
Asked whether he was open to not building the tunnels, he said: “I’ll have more to say about that soon”.
“Your general proposition that time-of-use pricing affects the viability of projects or the necessity of projects ... is correct,” Bishop said.
Asked whether he was cancelling the Mount Victoria tunnel, Bishop said: “I’m not cancelling the tunnel, I’m giving active consideration to what time-of-use pricing might do to transport projects.”
“You have to factor these things in because they are a mechanism for demand management and making more effective use of our infrastructure,” he said.
Willis said that work was already underway on the project.
“Mount Vic Tunnel is all go. Work is already underway on that project, which is to say there’s around $150m of work under way already, which has involved drills and spades in the ground,” she said.
Willis was not committed to The Terrace tunnel part of the project. She said charges would need to be balanced against cost-of-living implications.
Mt Victoria Tunnel is one of 17 Roads of National Significance projects that contribute to a forecast quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar transport spend over the next two decades.
A backdown, if it comes, would be a major reversal for National, which made a pledge to “double the tunnel” central to its election campaigns in Wellington for the last two elections. The then Labour Government planned to build the tunnel, but on a longer timeframe.
So central is the tunnel to the Government’s promises that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced the controversial fast track scheme at the Basin Reserve, a cricket ground on the tunnel’s doorstep. The location was chosen to emphasise the new infrastructure that could be built more quickly with the fast-track.
Bishop has said he remains committed to the projects, but has heavily hinted they will be phased or scaled back in some way.
Many large cities have congestion pricing, which aim to reduce road use in central cities by charging drivers to enter a congestion zone. The charges aim to encourage people to shift from using their cars to move to cycling or public transport.
In London, motorists pay £18 ($40) to use central city roads.
The Infrastructure Plan noted that decades of building new motorways in Auckland had not sped up traffic – in fact, average speeds continued to fall.
“Adding new capacity is increasingly difficult and expensive. Many corridors are already built out, and tunnels or rapid-transit conversions come with high costs and disruption,” the report said.
It said capacity could be built in more targeted locations, “but the greatest gains now lie in using existing roads better”.
“This approach shifts less-urgent trips to off-peak times and encourages public transport use, freeing up road space for those who need it most. Previous modelling for Auckland suggests time-of-use charging could cut excess delay by around 35% and deliver equivalent network performance with roughly 20% less new capital investment,” the report said.
Wellington Mayor Andrew Little told the Herald the tunnel was “always the Government’s project so they decide what happens”.
“From Wellington’s point of view, what matters most is we have good infrastructure that means people can move around and across the city.
“What we need most of all is certainty about what the Government is doing so that the council and residents can plan with confidence,” he said.
On Tuesday, Bishop confirmed the Government was getting advice on how to toll the new Waitematā harbour crossing. The Commission recommended a $9 toll on both the new crossing and the existing Auckland Harbour Bridge, which would be necessary to discourage people from continuing to use the old bridge in order to avoid the toll.
Bishop was asked about whether both the new Mt Victoria Tunnel and the existing one would need to be tolled if built.
He said a decision on congestion pricing “complicated” a decision on tolling, presumably because the tunnels might form an entry point to a central congestion zone.
“That will have to worked through as part of the business casing for the tunnel, and a recommendation would flow through to me,” Bishop said.
“There’s a variety of quite complicated issues around both tolling and time of use charging in both Auckland and Wellington, which we’re working our way through and any decision on that is a long time away,” he said.