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Transit NZ's proposal to toll the western ring route has hit more opposition - from the Auckland and Waitakere city councils - and is likely to be rejected tomorrow by North Shore.
Waitakere councillors yesterday voted unanimously to refuse support for the proposal, which Transit says is needed to bridge an $800 million funding gap to ensure the 48km route between Manukau and Albany can be completed by 2015.
That followed a decision last week by Auckland City Council to accept a resolution of its transport committee that it reject tolls, despite a staff recommendation that these be supported in principle, and efforts by Mayor Dick Hubbard to champion the concept.
The Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee has also voted against tolling the western route, and North Shore City Council is likely tomorrow to accept a staff recommendation that it do likewise in the absence of more information from Transit, which warns that a reliance on traditional funding could delay completion until 2030.
Manukau City has yet to approve a submission to Transit, but Mayor Sir Barry Curtis indicated last week that although it could accept tolls in principle it was concerned about the impact of imposing these on only one side of Auckland.
He preferred a regional fuel tax as a more equitable funding tool.
Transit was guarded last night about the latest setbacks, but a spokeswoman said it intended carefully weighing up about 20,000 public submissions it had received so far in a consultation due to close next Monday.
Chief executive Rick van Barneveld has said tolls would provide more effective travel demand management than a regional fuel tax, to support economic development goals of Auckland's growth strategy by encouraging businesses to set up closer to where people live, and discouraging long-distance commuting.
But a Waitakere City staff report to yesterday's council meeting said a lack of proposed entry and exit points between Avondale and Hobsonville to toll lanes down the middle of the Northwestern Motorway "completely negates any of those potential benefits" by largely bypassing the city.
Transit has offered to consider amending that part of the plan, which would include tolls across all lanes at six other points along the western route, of between 75c and $1.50 at peak times and double for trucks.
It says that, although only 2 per cent of expected revenue from the scheme would come from the Northwestern toll lanes, it needs to charge the full route to limit congestion.
But the report says the lanes are modelled to carry a maximum of 3500 vehicles a day in each direction by 2021, compared with almost 16,000 now using each lane of the motorway between Te Atatu and Patiki Rd.
It estimates that just $45 million would be raised from tolling the lanes over 35 years, against a cost of more than $125 million for widening the motorway to make room for them.
"Council officers cannot identify a situation where such an amount has been spent on building road capacity that would be so heavily under-utilised, adjacent to free traffic lanes that are so heavily utilised," the report says. It seems "highly inequitable" that less well-off parts of Auckland should bear a relatively heavy cost for completing the ring route when a major beneficiary, the airport company, is not being asked to contribute.
