KEY POINTS:
We can protest until the cows come home about the unfairness of Auckland motorists being taxed more for transport improvements than other New Zealanders but, if Finance Minister Michael Cullen cannot be turned, then a flat levy on fuel sales is the most cost-effective and efficient way of doing it.
It is also the fairest because it acknowledges that Auckland's transport network is an organic whole and that a new bridge across the Manukau, or more park and ride facilities in Albany, will improve circulation throughout the region.
Tolling, which hopefully has been ditched as a funding option, is not only selectively punitive, picking off users on just one artery of the network, but is also a grossly inefficient collection method, with much of the money immediately frittered away on billing, collecting and chasing bad debts. To say nothing of the establishments costs for roading authorities and motorists, who would have to put transponders in their vehicles.
Of course, this being Auckland, the leak about a 10c-a-litre fuel tax being likely in next month's Budget had hardly hit the Herald headlines than the region's political warlords were circling the honeypot, jostling for their slice of the action.
Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey and the Greens were insisting the full impost be spent on public transport. North Shore Mayor George Wood was perturbed that the proposal to spend a third of the surcharge on rail transport would penalise North Shoreites. "We don't have rail on the North Shore so are we going to be paying through the nose for something which is not going to benefit us at all?"
This from a mayor whose city has had a king's ransom in Government money spent in recent years on their dedicated busway - a railway, in effect, on rubber tyres.
Sensing voter disquiet in an election year, Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee declared himself "uncomfortable" with any levy over 5c a litre.
Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard, on the other hand, showed a suicidal streak unbecoming a good Christian gent, and talked of the need for a surcharge of between 50c and $1 to raise enough money to solve our transport woes. He'd better hope his opponents in the coming local elections have short memories and bad filing systems.
Squabbling like baby seabirds over their share of central Government's regurgitated fish is a time-honoured tradition among Auckland mayors but, in the case of transport, it rather misses the point. It's the regional distribution of all funds for public transport and roading we should be concentrating on, not the breakdown of the proceeds of a 10c fuel levy.
If, as is rumoured, a third of it is to help fund electrifying rail, this doesn't mean Mr Wood's busway is going to suffer. It just means that those funds will come from some other Government funding source.
Oddly, none of the local worthies seems to be celebrating the underlying message in the leak that Dr Cullen has finally conceded that Auckland commuter rail must be electrified. This means we, at last, have finality and can order new rolling stock.
The Employers and Manufacturers Association correctly argues that neither tolls nor a new regional petrol tax will raise enough to fund the shortfall in completing the western bypass and electrifying rail. The bosses' union is demanding the Government "stop messing around" and borrow. "In this way, we would also achieve intergenerational equity."
At the risk of them fainting away, I don't understand why borrowing hasn't been adopted either. Then again perhaps it now has been and the proposed fuel levy will be used to service that debt. We'll have to wait for the Budget to find out.
Of course, the proposed levy could also turn out to be an instrument of road pricing, providing a sudden shock increase at the pumps sufficient to drive a new wave of car users on to the trains and buses. Let's hope the public transport network is ready to cope with this surge if it occurs.
It would be a disaster if we had a repeat of the recent Western line chaos. Anecdotal evidence indicates that rail users who disappeared back to their cars or on to the buses as a result of the rail service meltdown have not returned to the rails. Not yet anyway.
