Low housing density and high road-use tolls: Auckland Council v Government - Simon Wilson

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown (left) has managed to get himself offside with both the Housing Minister Chris Bishop (centre) and Transport Minister Simeon Brown - and he's on the right side of only one of those disputes. Photo / NZME

OPINION

Fancy a $50 road toll from Auckland to Whangārei? What about a delay to new housing density plans, even though most people are likely to support them?

The first would happen if the Government funded roads the way it plans to fund railways. The second is the outcome of a bizarre Auckland Council vote on the Government’s housing proposals last week.

There’s good and bad in the policies of this Government, but it’s weird how Mayor Wayne Brown and his council seem to find it so hard to spot the difference.

Brown opposes the Government’s proposed Roads of National Significance (Rons) and in my view is right to do so. Especially in light of questions about how they’ll be paid for (details below).

But last week he and a majority of his councillors disgraced themselves by voting against an eminently sensible idea: that the best places for housing density are town centres and along major public transport corridors.

That’s not even controversial, is it?

Let’s take the housing density decision first. The Labour Government introduced the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS), which required councils to allow three homes of up to three storeys to be built on almost any property.

This was extremely controversial. National supported it at the time but withdrew that support before the election last year.

Labour also introduced a National Policy Statement (NPS) on Urban Development. This proposed buildings of six storeys or more within “walkable catchments” from the city centre, the 10 other metropolitan centres (like Takapuna and Manukau) and around train and busway stations.

Certain “qualifying matters”, like flood risk and special heritage value, would allow properties to be exempt from the new rules. Decisions would be made by an independent hearings panel (IHP).

The MDRS came into force in August 2022, but the NPS was open to a longer consultative process. Since the election, the new Housing Minister, Chris Bishop, has made the Government’s position very clear. They will repeal the MDRS, but they support the walkable catchments of the NPS.

Building up in town centres and along transport corridors is a central plank of Bishop’s housing policy.

When Auckland Council met last week, the proposal before them was to ask the IHP to “consider progressing the hearing topics on walkable catchments”. The council can’t direct the IHP, and the hearings process is designed for the public to have their say.

The motion was put up by councillor Richard Hills, chair of the planning committee, and seconded by Mayor Brown. In effect, it said, “Let’s keep the process going.”

As Hills says, “This is about building homes exactly where everyone says they want them to be built.”

But then Brown voted against it, even though he has often spoken in favour of “brownfields” density rather than “greenfields” sprawl. So did Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson and the other National Party councillors, along with some others. The motion was lost 9-12.

Richard Hills.

This means a further delay in getting more housing built where it’s needed most. And it’s a bad-faith decision. Mayor Brown often talks about his desire to build a working relationship with the Government. And Bishop has shown willing: his density plans are a compromise between those who favour the MDRS, like the Coalition for More Homes, and those who seem to want no density anywhere, or at least anywhere near them, like the Character Homes Coalition.

But Brown has thrown that compromise back in Bishop’s face.

As Hills says: “This shouldn’t even have been political. It’s a sensible approach from the Government and it’s in line with our own policy from 2022. We should have all agreed.”

Those in favour were Jo Bartley, Julie Fairey, Alf Filipaina, Lotu Fuli, Shane Henderson, Richard Hills, Kerrin Leoni and the two Māori board members, Edward Ashby and Tau Henare.

Those against: Wayne Brown, Andy Baker, Chris Darby, Christine Fletcher, Daniel Newman, Greg Sayers, Desley Simpson, Sharon Stewart, Ken Turner, Wayne Walker, John Watson and Maurice Williamson.

If you’re thinking there’s a pattern of age and ethnicity there, you’d be right. Boomers win again.

Meanwhile, there’s that question of a $50 toll.

Transport expert Matt Lowrie, at Greater Auckland, has crunched the numbers on the three new Roads of National Significance proposed for the highway connecting Auckland and Whangārei.

He wanted to know what level of tolls would be required if these roads were paid for on the same user-pays basis as the Government has announced for rail.

Under the previous Government, some of the revenue from road users (fuel taxes and road user charges: RUCs) was used to fund the railways.

The logic is that this is valuable for road users, because every rail passenger and container travelling by rail relieves pressure on the roads. But the new Government doesn’t agree, at least in relation to passenger services.

“It is unfair to ask people using the roads to fund rail infrastructure,” says the draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport. “Rail investments will continue to be supported and funded through the Rail Network Investment Programme, as agreed by Cabinet. Track User Charges (TUCs) paid by rail users will be used to support these investments.”

TUCs bring in only about $20 million a year, but even basic maintenance costs over $50 million.

Spending on rail is going up, but only because of costs associated with the City Rail Link. The GPS shows spending on the rest of the network will decline. And it clearly signals that fares will rise.

Greater Auckland's Matt Lowrie: His number crunching reveals that if roads had to pay their way, the new Rons would have a shockingly high level of tolls.

If we subjected roads to the same approach, we would need tolls, alongside road user charges. How big would they be?

Lowrie’s data comes from published NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) reports. He factored in a 50-year payback period for each project, with 3 per cent interest on loans. He assumed 15 per cent of traffic would be trucks, which is higher than now, and allowed $30,000 per lane km per year for maintenance. The Rons will be four-lane, equating to $120,000 per km per year. That’s at the very low end of current maintenance costs.

Because the Government has announced that all vehicles will eventually pay road-user charges, Lowrie also factored in RUCs at the just-announced rate of $76/1000km for light vehicles and the highest rate of $435/1000km for heavy vehicles.

The results are startling. One reason for this is that despite all the hoo-ha, the road to Whangārei is not much travelled. But another is that roads never pay for themselves anyway. Many people like to think they do, but they are heavily subsidised by taxes.

We value them for their utility. The point is, we should do the same for railways.

The northernmost Rons is State Highway 1 from Whangārei to the Marsden Pt roundabout. Lowrie calculated a toll of $6.40 per trip would be needed for that road to pay its way.

Without a toll, it could only do this if traffic numbers rose from the current 18,000 to 55,000 per day (for details, see the table). That’s the same as SH18, the Upper Harbour Highway.

The next Rons will be a new Brynderwyn Hills bypass. Construction hasn’t been costed since 2017, but even using that data, the toll would be around $16.70 per trip. The vehicle count (before the existing roadworks) is only 10,000 a day, but to pay its way and avoid a toll, there would need to be more than 10 times as much traffic: about as much as the Northern Motorway south of Constellation Drive.

The Brynderwyns Rons is a straight-up scandal. NZTA is currently spending $75 million to make the existing road more resilient, which should render it fit for purpose for some decades. But the Government intends to spend a further $1.69 billion (and counting) anyway.

And the third Rons? It’s SH1 from Wellsford down to Warkworth. To pay for itself over 50 years, Lowrie says the toll would be a whopping $31.30.

Alternatively, maybe traffic numbers will rise from the current 11,000 to 113,000 per day. That’s as many vehicles as use the SH20 motorway just south of the Māngere Bridge.

Did I say $50 above? The combined toll is $54.40. Throw in the existing $2.60 Northern Gateway toll, on the same road, and that’s a cool $57 to drive from Whangārei to the Big Smoke.

This won’t happen, of course. No government would allow it. But the number gives the lie to the argument that roads pay for themselves.

I asked Simeon Brown about this. He declined to comment directly on Lowrie’s numbers, saying instead that the Rons “will support economic growth and connection between Auckland and Whangārei, and will enable people and freight to get to where they want to go quickly and safely”.

He added that the Government will be looking at “opportunities around alternative funding and financing options” and this “could include tolling, public private partnerships (PPPs) or other funding mechanisms”.

Wayne Brown isn’t impressed with what he calls the Roads of National Party Significance. He thinks, in my view rightly, there are much better ways to spend the transport budget.

He also thinks the Government should be working with him on an integrated transport plan for Auckland. It’s a reasonable position to take.

Trouble is, as Chris Bishop discovered over housing last week, the mayor sometimes finds it hard to embrace the reasonable options himself.

Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.