Council's challenge on cash for trains

Auckland regional leaders are challenging the Government to open its wallet for electric trains before a national fuel tax rise makes it more expensive for motorists to keep their cars on the road.

Regional council chairman Mike Lee said yesterday that Auckland's $1 billion electrification project had been left in limbo for almost six months since the Government scrapped a regional fuel tax intended to pay for new trains and other public transport needs.

He said Transport Minister Steven Joyce had missed a Cabinet deadline of last month to produce a substitute plan for the Government's purchase of electric trains.

Aucklanders were now waiting at the station for word on how the funding gap would be filled.

"People in Auckland will soon be paying higher fuel taxes and road user charges, and still there is no sign of electric trains," Mr Lee said.

"We call on the Transport Minister to honour his commitment to make up the funding shortfall the Government created when it did away with the Auckland regional fuel tax in March."

But a spokeswoman for Mr Joyce said: "There is a process going on with officials that Mr Lee is well aware of.

"It involves finalising the governance of metro rail, including in Auckland, finalising the scope of the project, and funding.

"Recommendations on all those issues are expected shortly."

But Mr Lee is worried that the electrification project - for which the Auckland Regional Transport Authority had hoped to invite formal tenders for 35 four-carriage trains in May from a shortlist of four potential suppliers - may not get the money it needs.

He has told the minister that he understood officials were investigating how the electrification project could be "re-scoped" to reflect an inability by KiwiRail subsidiary Ontrack to deliver a network capable of running 10-minute services within a budget allocated for that purpose.

"These delays put the reliability and effectiveness of the region's rail system at risk and raise the question of whether the system will have adequate capacity to cater for the Rugby World Cup in 2011," he wrote.

"It is also highly unlikely that the goal of completing electrification by 2013 will now be achieved."

Regional transport committee chairwoman Christine Rose told fellow members on Wednesday that the lack of any Government budgetary provision for electric trains was making "even more of a farce" of efforts required of them by statute to formulate a 30-year transport strategy.

Other members expressed concern that not even the most ambitious public transport investment scenarios proposed in the strategy's first draft would result in any greenhouse gas reductions by 2041.

Regional councillor Joel Cayford said the Government's commitment last week to reduce greenhouse gases by between 10 per cent and 20 per cent by 2020 meant "the world has changed for Auckland" and that its citizens would be expected to play their part in modifying their travel behaviour.

But Auckland City Mayor John Banks said yesterday he remained "quietly confident" that the Government would equip the region with modern electric trains which would offer "our best chance of getting people out of cars and into integrated public modes".

He also intended making a $1 billion-plus rail tunnel from the western end of Britomart Station to Mt Eden a plank of his campaign to become mayor of the new Auckland Super City and to promote the project as a public-private partnership.