Backers of peninsula link look to tolls again

Jeanette Fitzsimons

Rodney District leaders have gone back to promoting a $200 million road link to Whangaparaoa Peninsula as a toll project, despite scepticism raised by Government officials last year.

Cabinet papers released to the Green Party under the Official Information Act show that officials favoured contributing part of a since-aborted regional fuel tax to a non-toll "Penlink" road in expectation of a $2 economic return on each dollar of a $150 million Government investment.

That compared with a return of $1.50 from every dollar of $116 million of fuel tax money needed for a toll road, on an assumption that a charge of about $2.50c a trip would prompt 50 per cent of motorists to keep using the existing free route through Silverdale.

The officials, from the Treasury and Ministry of Transport, said in advice in August to former Finance Minister Michael Cullen and his Transport Minister colleague Annette King that the case presented by Rodney District for making Penlink a toll road was "by no means clear".

They said it would make a "modest contribution" of $40 million to the project, yet costs assumed in the business case of collecting fees from motorists appeared low, and a funding gap of $11 million would remain even after a fuel tax contribution.

The Ministry of Transport's preference for fuel tax funding was to have rail electrification as the major beneficiary and the rest to go to a bundle of small-scale road safety projects - including pedestrian refuges, cycle lanes and special treatment of roadside hazards - which they said would spread benefits throughout the region of at least $3 for every dollar spent.

The officials said Penlink would provide only local benefits from a regionally applied tax.

Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons, in relaying the papers to the Herald, expressed concern that Dr Cullen and Ms King did not include that advice or any mention of the safety improvements package in a subsequent paper presented to a Cabinet committee.

"The ministers were determined to build Penlink come hell or high water," she said yesterday.

She criticised them and their officials for ticking off Penlink as a regional priority, a requirement of fuel tax legislation, when she believed it remained low on the Auckland Regional Transport Committee's list of projects.

All bets are now off after the new Government's decision to ditch the regional fuel tax.

But Rodney District Mayor Penny Webster remains "very hopeful" the Penlink road and its bridge across Weiti River will be built with tolls.

"I think what we are going to do is probably revert quickly to Plan A, which is a toll road.

"I am a little bit disappointed, but we will be happy as long as Penlink is built in the next couple of years."

Mrs Webster blamed the Greens for blocking 1999 legislation making Penlink a toll project, but was pleased with an assurance from Transport Minister Steven Joyce last week that it would be considered as a "strategic local road".

She said of Ms Fitzsimons: "This is the woman who told me that if we built Penlink we would be opening up Whangaparaoa. I said, well I'm sorry, I think it's opened up already - the traffic congestion is there already."