KEY POINTS:
Transit's consultation on a toll to bring forward the completion of the Western Ring Route has grabbed Aucklanders' attention.
To date, we've received around 20,000 public response forms. This is encouraging because the Western Ring Route has the potential to be such an important part of improving transport in Auckland.
Only 18 per cent of the traffic that goes through Auckland's Central Business District each day has the CBD as final destination. The rest only goes there because that is where the state highway network takes it.
While many of the world's great cities have well-connected road networks that allow traffic to bypass city centres, Auckland's state highways funnel motorists through its centre.
The Western Ring Route would provide a high quality alternative to SH1, bypassing the CBD and linking Manukau, Auckland, Waitakere and North Shore cities. This would bring significant benefits - the Allen Report in 2004 found that early completion of the route would mean an annual productivity boost of $838 million for every year the project is advanced.
Opening the route involves completing missing links and adding extra lanes to combine the Southwestern (SH20), Northwestern (SH16) and Upper Harbour (SH18) Highways. Along with the region's planned improvements to public transport, the completed motorway would substantially relieve congestion. The question is how we fund it.
Over the next five years, government spending on land transport is set to exceed the tax take from road user charges, petrol tax and motor vehicle registrations by $300 million. So far $1.3 billion has been allocated to the Western Ring Route over the next 10 years, but this still leaves an $800 million shortfall.
Using traditional funding sources alone, we cannot be confident that the route could be fully opened until around 2030. It would be possible to complete parts of the route before then, but this would just move congestion around, leaving Auckland with an incomplete and ineffective western bypass.
A regional fuel tax has been suggested as a supplementary form of funding that could be used to complete it sooner. This will be passed on in Transit's report on the outcomes of consultation. But tolling is the only supplementary funding source Transit can use under existing policy and legislation to advance projects with certainty, and it can be done now.
By borrowing money and using tolls to repay the debt, Transit can continue to plan for completion of the route by 2015.
A completed, tolled Western Ring Route would offer real time savings. Future modelling suggests motorists could save up to 40 minutes between Albany and Manukau in peak times. The drive from Westgate to the airport would be 25 to 30 minutes shorter. Similar savings are forecast for other trips.
More importantly, these time savings could not be maintained if the route is not tolled, simply because without a tariff influencing the number of people choosing to use the route, new traffic would quickly fill the new motorway capacity.
Aucklanders have seen this enough times with previous increases in road capacity.
It is time to think about changing the pattern, as we cannot just build our way out of congestion. Tolling also complements the improvements being made in bus, train and ferry passenger transport in the region by ensuring that where public transport is a viable option, there is a stronger incentive to use it.
If tolling is used, you would have the option of taking a free alternative route if you don't want to pay a toll, or you could pay to get from A to B quicker, either every day, or just when you need to. The free alternative route, while not as quick as the toll road, will still flow better than it would otherwise have done if the Western Ring Route was delayed.
We recognise that there are concerns with the toll concept we have put forward for consultation, including diversion of traffic on to local roads, and access to the toll lanes on SH16. But we are confident that we can address some of these issues, which the consultation process has been designed to find out more about. As a first step, Transit wants to know what Aucklanders think about tolling in principle.
If there is sufficient support for tolling to bring forward the opening of the Western Ring Route, we are committed to ongoing work with stakeholders to develop a toll scheme that offers real benefits, flexibility and choice.
It's not too late for you to have your say. You can complete a public response form by December 4, or sign up before December 1 to present your views at a Listening Session. We want to know what you think, so that we can develop a solution that works for Auckland.
* Rick van Barneveld is chief executive of Transit New Zealand. To find out more about Transit's toll concept for the Western Ring Route, request a public response form, book a Listening Session phone (09) 358 8647 or visit transit.govt.nz
