Note that the accord - or, as it is more appositely labelled, the Auckland Transport Alignment Project - does not specifically focus on the three key projects Len Brown campaigned on when he was elected the inaugural mayor of the Super City in 2010.
Implicitly, the Auckland City Rail Link (CRL) is still there as the city's top transport priority.
The council has identified the CRL as key to delivering the Auckland Plan, the City Centre Master Plan, the Long Term Plan and the Integrated Transport Programme.
Auckland will grow by more than 700,000 people in the next 30 years and the CRL, coupled with bus improvements, is the only way to keep Auckland moving. Or is it?
The fine print in the joint document says: "Auckland Council has identified the need for additional funding from 2018 onwards to deliver its preferred future transport network and has sought to engage with the Government to enable implementation of an alternative funding system by 2018/19."
Here's the counterpoint: "The Government is committed to ensuring Auckland's transport system is able to meet the region's needs and recognises Auckland will need significant investment in its transport system in the coming decades to provide for its forecast growth.
"The Government needs to be confident that investment in Auckland's transport system will address the region's transport challenges and provide value for money before it will consider providing Auckland with additional funding or funding tools."
Anyone with even a modicum of appreciation for bureaucratic doublespeak will quickly perceive there is plenty of wriggle room left for either side - in particular, the Government, which has to pony-up much of the revenue to fund the transport architecture necessary to underpin Auckland's growth - to internalise these statements to fit their own constituencies.
But it's all wrapped up neatly in a statement of intentions which says the Government and Auckland Council have agreed to work together "to identify an aligned strategic approach for the development of Auckland's transport system that delivers the best possible outcomes for Auckland and New Zealand".
Note also that the timeframe for this "alignment" project is one year, comfortably into the realm of the next local body elections in 2016.
The political takeout is that Brown has been reduced to a mere cipher in the Cabinet's (unstated) unwillingness to commit taxpayer funding, even to the City Rail Link, ahead of the next mayoral elections.
It's tough for Brown.
But from a central government perspective, Cabinet ministers will be relieved that the mayor's costly - and from their point of view, uncosted - ambitions have been reined in by Town's "belts and braces" exercise.
From Town's perspective, the alignment strategy makes perfect sense. He's a practiced local authority chief executive with much experience himself in transport planning.
He has some excellent executives in his leadership team. Dean Kimpton, the chief operating officer, is a former managing director of infrastructure firm Aecom.
Jim Quinn, the former KiwiRail chief executive, is also coming on board as chief of strategy. Town played up Quinn's appointment by saying Auckland is growing and changing rapidly.
"His knowledge of infrastructure, transport and the technology industry will be a great asset to Auckland Council and Aucklanders."
What's clear is that Town is breaking through the political stasis holding Auckland back.
The assets review is clearly intended to spark action on what can be sold to help fund the billions of dollars of transport infrastructure shortfall. Among the council's portfolio: Auckland Airport shares worth $1.4 billion; Ports of Auckland ($1.079 billion) and $2 billion of Vector power shares not due to be handed to the council for 58 years.
The Government may ease the burden by allowing motorway tolls. Brown has little option but to acquiesce on these major measures.
If he'd taken the leadership earlier himself and led the assets review he could have come out of this a hero. But politicking got in the way.
