Local roads, public transport, safety, and walking and cycling are losing out at the expense of the government’s big new roading projects, opposition parties say.<\/p>\n
Transport Minister Simeon Brown on Monday\u00a0announced the next three years of transport projects<\/a>, a $32.9 billion spend with $23.6b coming from the National Land Transport Fund, $5.8b from councils’ rates, and $15.1b in additional Crown investment.<\/p>\n The plan was developed by the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi in line with the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport finalised in June.<\/p>\n It put much of the funding towards the Roads of National Significance National\u00a0campaigned on at the election<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Roads of Regional Significance<\/a>\u00a0announced in July to replace the previous government’s NZ Upgrade Programme.<\/p>\n The sum total is a record amount for the sector – even adjusted for inflation – from a government which came to power campaigning on cost cuts.<\/p>\n Labour’s Transport spokesperson said the focus on big new roads is hypocrisy for a government that came to power promising to cut costs.<\/p>\n “It is hypocritical,” he told RNZ.<\/p>\n “This is a government that has cancelled the ferries and is lumping extra costs on drivers. When we look at the increased levels of driver’s licence fees that are coming in, the driver’s tax that will kick in from the start of next year the planned increases to fuel excise from 2027 this is a government that is simply hypocritical and lumping additional costs onto road users.”<\/p>\n “This is a government that is basically presiding over a stripping out of roles in the road safety area in Waka Kotahi. On the one hand, the government is saying that they’re really quite concerned about road safety. On the other hand, the actions are proving something quite different.”<\/p>\n He was unsurprised by the contents of the plan, however.<\/p>\n “There really are no surprises. I mean, the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport was so tightly nailed down that it’s exactly what we have been expecting, and that is that the majority of the government’s investments will be into roads.<\/p>\n He said the plan lacked ambition for the communities and cities in New Zealand, with the government putting “all its eggs in the one basket”.<\/p>\n “Roading is absolutely important, but so are things like public transport, so is rail, so is road safety.”<\/p>\n He acknowledged there was investment into rail but said it was about $800m lower than advertised, with Labour having put $455m in funding towards the Lower North Island Rail investment package in last year’s Budget and further funding provided by local councils.<\/p>\n “What we’ve heard today from the government is a reannouncement of a reannouncement,” he said.<\/p>\n “They’re talking about the lower North Island Rail investment package … they’re saying that that’s going to make a huge difference – it will. That’s why Labour made the decision to invest in it last year.<\/p>\n “Simeon Brown is being rather cute and simply reannouncing its reannouncement yet again.”<\/p>\n Green Party Transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter also raised concerns about funding for local roads. About $5.8b of the $32.9b in the NLTP comes from council rates, but only $1.3b was being put into local roading improvements, and a further $2.25m into operational costs.<\/p>\n “More people are going to have to rely on cars and trucks to get around because we don’t have a pipeline of alternatives like rapid transit, inter-city passenger rail, public transport and safe walking and cycling in our communities,” she said.<\/p>\n “Most vehicle trips in our cities are relatively short distances within the urban area and that’s what’s congesting our roads.”<\/p>\n rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Local roads, public transport, safety, and walking and cycling are losing out at the expense of the government’s big new roading projects, opposition parties say. Transport Minister Simeon Brown on Monday\u00a0announced the next three years of transport projects, a $32.9 billion spend with $23.6b coming from the National Land Transport Fund, $5.8b from councils’ rates, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11261,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11262,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11260\/revisions\/11262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}