KEY POINTS:
Road tolls have been a political hot potato in Auckland since the harbour bridge opened 49 years ago.
Although 51,198 vehicles swamped the bridge's toll plazas in their first five and a half hours on a Saturday afternoon in 1959, fees including 2s 6d (25c) for cars in
a schedule rising from 4 pence for bus passengers to 20 shillings for four-axle truck and trailer rigs were opposed by three North Shore councils. The impost on car drivers would have amounted to $4.83c in today's money, according to the Reserve Bank's online inflation calculator, or just over $24 a week for daily northbound commuters.
By 1980, a toll of 20c would have equated to just 83c in today's terms, as $13 million remained owing on the $32 million bridge and clip-ons.
But public hostility to a move by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to lift the toll back to 25c, five days before a byelection that year in East Coast Bays, dashed National Party candidate Don Brash's chances of an early political career.
The Muldoon administration abolished the toll in 1984, arguably to help its general election chances, but the idea of charging drivers to pay for new roads is backfiring on National again - 25 years on.
Party transport spokesman Maurice Williamson appears to have had no premonition of proposing anything outlandish by suggesting most New Zealanders would be willing to part with up to $50 a week in return for time and fuel savings from travelling on uncluttered toll roads.
That sum came from his nomination of possible tolls of $3 to $5 a trip, predominantly on new roads such as the proposed Waterview motorway link in Auckland, but also the existing harbour bridge in association with a $4 billion set of future road and rail tunnels.
Although party deputy leader Bill English tried desperately yesterday to stamp out any suggestion of "$50 a week kind of charges on motorists", and indicated new roads could just as well be paid from Government bonds,
National leader John Key joined in later, saying $50 a week would be "simply unacceptable and won't be happening."
But the Labour-led Government has already sanctioned a toll of $2 each way on just one new 7.5km section of State Highway 1 north of Auckland, the Alpurt B2 motorway opening early next year between Orewa and Puhoi.
That is to repay over 35 years a loan for just half the $365 million construction cost, and Automobile Association spokesman Simon Lambourne sees it as a "reasonable" price for what the Transport Agency expects will be savings of six to nine minutes on the alternative winding coastal route.
But Mr Lambourne will not be drawn, without consulting the AA's more than 264,000 Auckland members, on what might be a reasonable charge to drive through tunnels joining State Highway 20 to the Northwestern Motorway at Waterview.
The Transport Agency is proposing a twin set of two-lane tunnels for $1.89 billion, which the Government is considering building as the country's first transport public private partnership (PPP), but the AA and Auckland Business Forum want them "future-proofed" with three lanes each way for an extra $250 million.
Predecessor agency Transit NZ proposed tolls of between 75c and $1.50 at points along the western ring route, or $7 for cars travelling the full 48km between Albany and Manukau, but dropped the idea last year after just 20 per cent of more than 21,500 Aucklanders supported it.
Ministry of Transport proposals for "congestion charges" of up to $6 a day to use key Auckland roads, or $10 extra for parking, were deferred in 2006 for more investigations after strong public opposition, but the Government is waiting for a follow-up report.