AA says congestion charge hearings vital

The Ministry of Transport is coming under pressure to hold public hearings on options for charging motorists to use congested Auckland roads, even though it says this would be premature.

Organisations such as the Automobile Association and Auckland Business Forum are dismayed it may not even issue a summary of submissions before advising the Government whether to introduce enabling legislation for motorists to be charged to use congested roads.

"We think it is outrageous that there are not going to be public hearings," the AA's Auckland transport spokesman, Simon Lambourne, said yesterday.

"If the Government and ministry are serious about consulting Aucklanders, they should be opening the submissions up."

Mr Lambourne said it was impossible, without full disclosure, to reconcile AA survey results with a comment by a senior ministry official last week that "well under" 20 per cent of 980 submissions appeared to have rejected various road-pricing options out of hand.

Ministry consultants spent more than a year on a $2.3 million study which investigated five options with maximum daily fees ranging from $5 to $10 for driving or parking in the 6am to 10am traffic peak, but without making recommendations.

An AA survey of 1690 of its Auckland members has found 69 per cent opposed to paying any more than they already do to fix the region's transport problems, although 42 per cent said they could support some type of action to get people out of private vehicles.

Business forum chairman Michael Barnett said trends identified in the submissions needed to be aired "in a very public and transparent way", certainly before the introduction of enabling legislation to Parliament, which Cabinet papers have revealed could be as soon as August.

Principal ministry adviser Chris Money acknowledged last week that only a minority of submissions gave unqualified support to charging drivers, but he believed many reservations raised could be satisfied by hefty investment in public transport and other "mitigation".

He assured the Herald yesterday there would be another round of submissions and then formal hearings if the Government decided that any pricing proposal should be investigated further.

The consultation undertaken so far had been on results of a study which had yet to lead to any firm proposal.

"No proposals are on the table - the Government is not actually proposing anything," Mr Money said.

He said enabling legislation could be introduced to Parliament before a decision was taken on whether any particular scheme should be pursued, and the public would be entitled to make submissions to a select committee.

The AA said in its own submission on the ministry's road-pricing study that financial security was an important influence on the views of those of its members it had surveyed.

"With over half of the correspondents admitting to being cautious or worried about their finances, it is clear that further burdens are not particularly welcome," it said.

"This is most notable in Waitakere City, where twice as many respondents were cautious than were comfortable."


AA survey

* 69 per cent of 1690 AA Auckland members opposed paying more to fix the region's transport woes; only 51 per cent were against making changes to get people out of their cars.
* A $10 daily parking levy was opposed by 73 per cent.
* Between 7 per cent and 9 per cent said they would look for new jobs outside charging zones.