KEY POINTS:
Sometime over this holiday period Auckland motorists going or, more likely, returning from the north will look forward to the completion of a motorway bypassing Orewa, Waiwera and Wenderholm. The prospect of paying a toll for the privilege of avoiding that beautiful but frequently congested coast seems to have been broadly accepted by the Auckland region since the national roadbuilder, Transit New Zealand, said its funds would not stretch the motorway that far. Why, then, is the region resisting a toll-funded programme for completing a much more important motorway?
The proposed western ring road, from Albany to Auckland Airport via the western suburbs, has the potential to relieve congestion not just on a few busy holiday weekends but every morning and evening of the working week. And not only for one route at the urban extremity but for every one of the region's four cities. Yet the councils of Auckland, North Shore, Manukau and Waitakere have all now considered Transit's tolling proposition and voted to oppose it. So has the Automobile Association, reflecting the result of an email poll of member motorists in which just over half (50.6 per cent) of 2651 respondents rejected tolls.
While Transit is not bound to obey these or any particular expressions of popular opinion, it is obliged to establish broad community support by some means or other. It has publicised its plan extensively and distributed brochures to Auckland households inviting everyone's view. It said it had received 20,000 individual submissions shortly before a deadline at the beginning of this month. It has yet to announce the result of its consultation exercise but right now the prospect of advancing the completion of the western ring by charging for its use is not looking bright.
Part of the problem with the proposal is probably that much of the western ring is already built. People naturally baulk at the suggestion they should pay for anything they have been using at no charge. Present users of the Northwestern Motorway from Pt Chevalier to Westgate, or the Upper Harbour Highway through Greenhithe and Hobsonville, or the motorway from Manukau to Hillsborough, passing the airport, are being asked to pay tolls for the sake of constructing the remaining link from Hillsborough to the Northwestern Motorway.
Another part of the problem is the credibility of Transit's plea of poverty. The Government has enlarged Transit's tax allocation once recently and if an early completion of the western ring is as desirable as Transit says, it should not be too difficult to shake the necessary revenue from the Finance Minister's grip. If it could find the means to offer Auckland voters a waterfront stadium, it could finish their motorway network a little faster.
There is much scepticism, too, about the economics of tolling by modern electronic means. The cost of recording road users from overhead gantries and billing them would probably consume the bulk of the revenue collected.
To answer all these objections Transit has to be more honest and bold in presenting the true reason for tolling. It is not financial necessity at all, it is to relieve congestion. Ultimately only a user charge can ration road demand. To build more tax-funded motorways free to users is to invite yet more use, more congestion. To provide a tolled alternative is to enable people to escape congestion when it is worth their while. Those who choose to pay would relieve congestion on free routes too. The benefits are unlikely to be widely believed until tolls are in operation; that has been the experience in Australia and elsewhere tolls are used. Here a nervous democracy seems more likely to prevail.
