Auckland wins boost for transport

Auckland roads and railways are the biggest winners in an extra Government handout of $500 million over four years, according to funding details announced yesterday.

Funding agency Land Transport New Zealand has allocated $280 million extra for state highways in Auckland and $50 million to passenger rail in the region.

The Auckland roading money is the lion's share of a national funding boost of $390 million to Transit New Zealand's state highway programme.

Local body transport projects will receive $52.5 million, and the remaining $7.5 million will be spent on an operator rating system aimed at helping trucking firms to improve safety.

Transit does not intend releasing full details of state highway spending until Wednesday, when it will launch an updated 10-year forecast in Auckland.

But it says the extra money will enable "much faster progress" on Auckland's incomplete and costly western ring route, to take pressure off State Highway 1 and the harbour bridge.

Land Transport NZ chair Dr Jan Wright also said yesterday the extra money would benefit the partly-built four-lane Waikato Expressway from Mercer to Cambridge.

Other regions will benefit, but apparently only through the construction of local roads and "localised" safety improvements to state highways.

Even without counting the extra $500 million from a Government tax windfall, much of which will be contested in a legal challenge by the country's main banks, Transit NZ planned to spend $330 million this year in Auckland out of a $968 million national budget.

But it was also looking forward to a hefty share of the windfall as "seed" funding from which to borrow extra money for early starts on missing components of the western ring route.

An invitation Prime Minister Helen Clark has accepted from the agency to next week's launch in Auckland of the updated highway forecast points to major announcements about those projects.

Meanwhile the region's transport officials are grateful for, but far from overwhelmed by, an extra $50 million for rail upgrades.

Auckland Regional Transport Authority chief executive Alan Thompson said last night that the money would enable good progress on double-tracking the crowded western rail line, but it still fell short of what his agency sought.