The head of a large new Government transport bureaucracy promises to make it easier for local councils to apply for funding assistance, through stronger "partnerships" to keep New Zealand moving.
Geoff Dangerfield left his job at the Ministry of Economic Development's helm to lead the New Zealand TransportAgency, which began life on Friday with around 1300 staff from a merger of Transit NZ and Land Transport NZ.
The merger marks a reversal of a split in 1998 when Transit lost its road-funding function to a predecessor of Land Transport NZ called Transfund.
That followed what National Party transport spokesman Maurice Williamson, who was transport minister at the time, says was a chorus of complaints by councils that Transit was hogging too much money for state highways and not leaving enough for local roads.
Transfund was later merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority to form Land Transport NZ, and the Government decided last year to reverse the split by folding Transit into the new agency, to provide what it hopes will be a more integrated and cost-effective approach to transport planning, funding and delivery.
Mr Dangerfield acknowledges past concerns about how government money was distributed, but says new legislation contains safeguards to prevent his organisation from favouring its own schemes unfairly ahead of the needs of local communities.
These include an obligation for the agency to give the same level of scrutiny to its activities as those of any other organisation applying for government funds, "so it's incumbent on me and the board [of eight directors] to do exactly that".
Reasons for all board funding decisions must be published, and the new agency will have to follow a three-year government policy statement due out tonight on indicative funding levels for various land transport categories.
These will include public transport, and the construction and maintenance of state highways and local roads, which together receive more than $2.4 billion a year of government money.
