Transit under fire over toll plans

Transit NZ is coming under fire from a broad range of organisations for its proposed reliance on tolls to bankroll its top national highway priority - Auckland's 35km western bypass.

Submissions ranging from those of the Manukau City Council and the Auckland airport company to the Automobile Association and a Papakura electrician fearful of the impact on low-paid workers have struck a common theme in querying the logic of making the project dependent on tolls.

The airport company says it supports tolling in principal as a sustainable long-term funding option, as long as this can be shown to be fair to users under a business model demonstrating financial viability.

But its environment and planning manager, John McShane, says it "vigorously disagrees" with a proposal to make the timely completion of supposedly urgent highway links dependent on the willingness of Aucklanders to accept tolls.

"That is not rational," he told a Transit hearing in Auckland on the agency's draft 10-year state highway forecast.

"Surely the most urgent projects should be prioritised and completed in the fastest possible time, irrespective of the funding source."

Transit has in its forecast reaffirmed the western ring route as its top national priority, but says it has no hope of completing all the missing links by a target of 2015 without being able to borrow $860 million for repayment through tolls.

This is in addition to $3.2 billion of Government money it expects to receive over the next 10 years to build and maintain Auckland highways.

But the organisation has delayed indefinitely a decision its board was to have made last month on what sort of tolling proposal to put up for public consultation.

Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis told Transit's hearings panel that concentrating tolls on the western bypass would fall heavily on some of the region's most economically deprived zones, such as in Mangere, Manurewa and Manukau Central.

"I believe that to be patently unfair," he said, noting that more than half his city's residents subsisted on less than $26,000 each a year.

He called for the Government to consider raising a regional petrol tax to spread the burden wider, or to borrow money without tolling the bypass.

AA Auckland district chairman Bruno Petrenas said a Ministry of Transport study on charging motorists for using key Auckland roads revealed "exorbitant" set-up and administration costs, and neither would it be practical for Transit to rely on tolls to complete the bypass.

"We will be active in our opposition to any attempt by Transit to progress this issue," he warned.

Although possible pricing schemes canvassed in the ministry study are separate from Transit's deliberations, Auckland Regional Council transport chairman Joel Cayford said comparisons between them were bound to militate against tolling the ring route.

This was because the idea of tolling strategic roading corridors came out bottom in the list of schemes, given a comparatively low revenue-projection and the likelihood of shifting congestion to adjacent roads.

"I expect the Transit board will find it a challenge to successfully overturn such robust findings in order to win public support for its State Highway 20 tolling proposals," Dr Cayford said.

Rodney District Council questioned the "travel-demand" logic of tolling a bypass which motorists should have an incentive rather than disincentive to use.

Electrician Pat O'Dea told the Transit panel of a friend who lost a job in Papakura paying $16 an hour and was forced to commute to Mt Wellington, where he earned $13.

The man had no way of getting to work without a car, and with three children to support, he and his wife were in fear of road-pricing options discussed in the Ministry of Transport study.