KEY POINTS:
The Auckland City Council's transport committee has delivered a bitter blow to Transit NZ by refusing to lend even conditional support to tolling the western ring route.
The committee last night rejected a staff recommendation that it support Transit's tolling plan in principle, subject to efforts by the agency to resolve any adverse impact on local roads.
That follows expressions of concern about the proposal last week by Waitemata City Council members and threatens to pull the rug from Transit's efforts to meet statutory requirements by satisfying the Government of strong community support for tolls to cover a loan for completing the 48km route by 2015.
Transit has yet to make a formal presentation to Auckland City.
The full council will hear the plan in a fortnight before delivering a final verdict.
It is likely to be supported by Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard, who was not at the transport committee meeting.
Last night committee members voted 5-3 to reject the proposal out of hand and indicated a preference for filling any funding shortfall from a regional fuel tax or some other revenue source such as vehicle licensing based on the age or size of a car.
The opposition to tolls cut across party lines, to include the only two Auckland Citizens and Ratepayers Now members with voting rights at the meeting and all City Vision-Labour members there, except for team leader Bruce Hucker.
Dr Hucker joined committee chairman Richard Simpson, of the Hobson Now team, and independent councillor Bill Christian in supporting tolls in principle.
Transit says it needs $800 million to supplement a Government funding commitment of $1.3 billion for the western route and $140 million to set up electronic tolling gantries and associated infrastructure.
It proposes tolls ranging from 75c at Greenhithe to $1.50 at Onehunga and $7 for the full route at peak times but that is in 2005 dollars and would be adjusted with inflation plus tariff rises of up to 2 per cent a year.
But veteran councillor and former Labour MP Richard Northey said the Government was not wedded to the idea of tolls and he believed it would be amenable to spreading the funding load more equitably by introducing a regional fuel tax.
He warned that tolling the western route would fall hardest on people of modest means in areas such as Onehunga, Mt Roskill, Waterview and Te Atatu and leave those in suburbs such as Epsom and Takapuna with a free ride on a less congested State Highway 1.
"We should have a system where we all pay," he said.
That followed a suggestion by Mr Simpson that tolls would be a useful "stick" to be used to control road-use with "carrots" such as better public transport and car-pooling, a concept he accused Transit of failing to promote.
City Vision councillor Cathy Casey, who is not a transport committee member so had no vote, urged her colleagues not to let Auckland become a "guinea pig" for the rest of New Zealand.
She said everyone else was watching Auckland and, if tolls were allowed into the region, they would be used for many other projects such as a motorway through Transmission Gully north of Wellington.
Fellow City Vision councillor Penny Sefuiva, who voted against the Transit scheme, said she was aware that Tauranga motorists were in for a "free ride" across a new harbour bridge which the agency had warned before last year's general election could not be built without tolls.
Auckland C and R Now member Linda Leighton, who represents the Roskill-Avondale wards, but also had no vote on the transport committee, said her constituents had been waiting for decades for a motorway extension to take congestion pressure off Hillsborough Rd.
Head-to-head
* Transit wants $800 million to supplement Government funding of $1.3 billion for the western route and $140 million for tolling infrastructure.
* Auckland City Council's transport committee is opposed to tolls and prefers a regional fuel tax or some other revenue source such as vehicle licensing based on the age or size of a car.
