KEY POINTS:
It seems to have taken relatively little for Transit New Zealand to abandon the proposal to have tolls on the western ring route. There was no talk of refining the scheme to answer criticism of it. Nor was there any suggestion of taking greater pain to explain its benefits to the public. Instead, Transit appeared fairly content to bow to the findings of a questionnaire, which showed 80 per cent of 21,500 respondents throughout the Auckland region opposed to tolling on the route. With this capitulation went the chance to show leadership, and to demonstrate that tolls offer the best, and fairest, means of rationing road demand.
Indeed, so quick was Transit to run up the white flag that it seems Joel Cayford, the chairman of the Auckland Regional Council's transport policy committee, might have been on to something last November when he warned of the consequences of the toll option's failure. He noted the fallback option to plug an $800 million funding gap would be a regional fuel tax. This tax he likened to "low-hanging fruit" to be plucked by the first agency to reach out a hand for it. Others pursuing the same avenue later, for public transport, would face increasing difficulties.
This seems set to come to pass. Transit intimates a 2015 deadline for the 48km route between Manukau and Albany might still be achievable, but only if just such a tax is imposed. This position is reinforced by the misguided support of most local-body politicians. They maintain a regionally applied fuel tax would be more equitable, but do not say how that can be so for a motorist from, for example, the eastern suburbs who would rarely venture on to the western ring route. Indeed, the concept is strongly disliked. Transit's questionnaire also proposed a regional petrol tax of 10c a litre, which would raise about $100 million a year throughout Auckland. It was even less popular than tolling.
Most people, of course, said they wanted the Government to pay the full cost of the western ring route from its surplus or from general taxation. That sidestepping of the issue raises questions about how much weight should be placed on such a mailout. Transit and the Government may be legally obliged to take into account the results of consultation. But surely neither can be hostage to such a questionnaire, returned, in this instance, by fewer than 5 per cent of the 480,000 households to which it was sent.
Transit should have gone on the front foot to explain both the importance of completing the western ring route to relieve pressure on the narrow State Highway 1 corridor and the advantages of tolling. Thirty-eight per cent of those who returned its questionnaire backed tolling in principle. Yet, curiously, they seemed not to accept it in this instance. Many asked whether it was fair to charge Aucklanders to use roads on one side of the region and not the other. Tolls have a fairness denied other options if motorists can avoid the charge. They provide an alternative that allows people to escape congestion when it is worth their while.
Waitakere's mayor claims his citizens had no reasonable free alternative to the northwestern motorway. He forgets, perhaps, that Transit's proposal would have widened the motorway from Waterview to Westgate allowing it to toll one lane in each direction, leaving two or three lanes free.
Tolls are also the most effective means of managing traffic demand. For that reason traffic advisers employed by local bodies supported the option. Their advice was ignored. Tremulousness carried the day. Congestion is the only winner.
