Speaker 1: Kyoda. I'm Georgina Campbell in for Chelsea Daniels and this
Speaker 1: is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the
Speaker 1: New Zealand Herald. The government has announced a record thirty
Speaker 1: two point nine billion dollar investment in New Zealand's transport
Speaker 1: network over the next three years through the National Land
Speaker 1: Transport Program. The big winner is new roads and the
Speaker 1: big loser is walking in cycling improvements. So what does
Speaker 1: this mean for congestion and emissions in our biggest cities
Speaker 1: and will a new national infrastructure pipeline prevent these roads
Speaker 1: being scuppered by future governments. Today on the Front Page
Speaker 1: we talk to Auckland University Senior lecturer in Urban Planning,
Speaker 1: Tim Welch to bring us up to speed. Tim, can
Speaker 1: you please run us through what the government has announced
Speaker 1: this week.
Speaker 2: Sure. This is the National Land Transportation Program or in LTP,
Speaker 2: and it's a program that's announced every three years. It
Speaker 2: can be six years by legislation, but traditionally our government
Speaker 2: does this every three years and it's really forms a
Speaker 2: budget for what we expect to spend over the next
Speaker 2: three years on anything from roads to public transport to
Speaker 2: walking and cycling, so anything that moves over land falls
Speaker 2: within this purview, and the government has allocated about thirty
Speaker 2: two point nine billion dollars over the next three years
Speaker 2: for this type of transportation.
Speaker 1: So what is in that thirty two point nine billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Who are the winners and who are the losers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if we break it down, the biggest
Speaker 2: amount of money that we're spending is going to roads,
Speaker 2: and a lot of that is either what Simeon Brown
Speaker 2: is calling pothole prevention. We used to call it just
Speaker 2: road maintenance. A huge chunk of the funding goes there,
Speaker 2: and out of that also is nearly eight billion dollars
Speaker 2: for an old program that keeps kind of coming back
Speaker 2: to life every few decades, which is the Roads of
Speaker 2: National Significance, which is really a funding package to try
Speaker 2: to bring more highways across the nation. There are some
Speaker 2: funds allocated to things that aren't roads, of course, there's
Speaker 2: six point eight billion dollars roughly going to public transportation,
Speaker 2: walking and cycling. But what this budget does not do,
Speaker 2: or this plan doesn't do, is bring us anything new
Speaker 2: really in anything, especially in public transport. Though really what
Speaker 2: this does is kind of fund existing programs and make
Speaker 2: sure that our existing public transport, whether it's rail or bus,
Speaker 2: continues to operate from a walking and cycling perspective. It's
Speaker 2: only going to fund projects that are already in the pipeline,
Speaker 2: and specifically, which is really unusual for something like the NLTP,
Speaker 2: it states that there won't be any more cycling or
Speaker 2: walking projects. And this is really unusual because even national
Speaker 2: governments prior to this one have allocated funding for more
Speaker 2: walking and cycling and have boosted public transport to some
Speaker 2: degree as well.
Speaker 3: Getting transport back to basics is one of the key
Speaker 3: reasons why Kiwi's voted for this government. They're sick of
Speaker 3: the potholes plaguing our roads. They'll fed up with the
Speaker 3: phantom projects that cost a fortune but never got off
Speaker 3: the ground. And they're tied of the speed bumps, planter
Speaker 3: boxes and cycleways that made going about their day to
Speaker 3: day lives all the more difficult.
Speaker 1: So roads are clearly the big winner in your view.
Speaker 1: Do you think the government has got that balance right?
Speaker 2: This isn't a balance that I mean we expected with
Speaker 2: this new government. They kind of made it clear that
Speaker 2: roads would be a priority, so it's not unexpected, but
Speaker 2: the level to which roads are funded and the expense
Speaker 2: of other modes is a bit of a surprise. It
Speaker 2: kind of goes contrary to what most other countries are doing.
Speaker 2: A lot of countries and cities are really focused on
Speaker 2: building up alternatives to driving, knowing that building one more
Speaker 2: road or one more highway isn't going to relieve congestion.
Speaker 2: It's only going to increase demand for more driving over
Speaker 2: the years and lead to further congestion. So really the
Speaker 2: flow of budgeting and transportation across the globe has been
Speaker 2: to balance out other public transport, walking, cycling, with road infrastructure.
Speaker 2: This budget looks like something that we would have built
Speaker 2: in or we would have budgeted for in the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Does that concern you the given climate change?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I certainly. Anytime we're looking at more roads, and
Speaker 2: like I said, we're looking at more driving as a result,
Speaker 2: and that clearly leads to higher levels of emissions. It's
Speaker 2: this idea of induced demands. So when we add more
Speaker 2: road space, it makes a trip seem cheaper in terms
Speaker 2: of your time use, so it encourages more people to
Speaker 2: do it more often, and as a result, we have
Speaker 2: more driving, more congestion, and these effects happen rather quickly.
Speaker 2: It's not like a ten to twenty year time horizon.
Speaker 2: When this happens, it happens within months to years of
Speaker 2: the construction finishing. And so certainly we'll have more cars
Speaker 2: on the road, more traffic, and more pollution, especially as
Speaker 2: the previously ended its focus on encouraging more electric vehicles,
Speaker 2: so we'll have more vehicles consuming fossil fuels, producing emissions
Speaker 2: and sitting in traffic for the foreseeable future of the
Speaker 2: next decade at least.
Speaker 1: What did you make of Transport Minister Samine Brown's comments
Speaker 1: that he thinks Kiwi's are sick and tired of the
Speaker 1: amount of money going into things like psychle ways for example.
Speaker 2: This really reflects something we often call a windshield bias,
Speaker 2: and so what it really is telling him us is
Speaker 2: that when you typically conduct all your travel driving and
Speaker 2: looking through a windshield, you tend to see everything from
Speaker 2: the perspective of a driver. And the another old saying
Speaker 2: is you know, if you as someone who has a hammer,
Speaker 2: everything looks like a nail. So the perspective is that
Speaker 2: you know if you see if you're driving and you
Speaker 2: see people on a bike. You can't really relate to
Speaker 2: them very well. There's no empathy for that, and everything's
Speaker 2: kind of framed in the idea that nobody else wants
Speaker 2: this infrastructure because it's just slowing everyone else down. The
Speaker 2: reality is that walking and cycling are hugely important to
Speaker 2: our cities. Without that infrastructure, our cities would be at
Speaker 2: a complete standstill. In Auckland alone are very limited cycle
Speaker 2: ways and shared paths carry over three million cycle trips
Speaker 2: a year, and if those were all converted to cars,
Speaker 2: this is our roads just wouldn't move at all.
Speaker 1: And it's quite a political statement. Simeon Brown wouldn't be
Speaker 1: saying that unless he thought people would like to hear that.
Speaker 1: So how do you change that perspective or encourage more
Speaker 1: people into active modes of transport or is driving just
Speaker 1: what people want?
Speaker 2: It's a really difficult position. And so whenever something like
Speaker 2: walking in cycling or public transport is put into the
Speaker 2: frame of a culture war, it makes it really difficult
Speaker 2: to make progress on these really important modes. And it's
Speaker 2: easy for politicians to say that people don't want it
Speaker 2: and to build roads because cutting ribbons is on roads
Speaker 2: or announcing that new roads will be built, or that
Speaker 2: you'll spend less time in your car is always something
Speaker 2: that gets headlines and it provides a few votes, But
Speaker 2: the reality is that we need these other modes. They're
Speaker 2: just part of functioning as a city. And it's unfortunate
Speaker 2: that it's kind of become part of political fodder that
Speaker 2: we would cut cycle ways and walking cycling and even
Speaker 2: limit our funding on public transport, when in reality they
Speaker 2: do a lot of the heavy lifting to keep our
Speaker 2: cities moving and they're really a critical component. So the
Speaker 2: rhetoric is really unfortunate. It'd be good to go back
Speaker 2: to a time when public transport and walking cycling investments
Speaker 2: didn't make the news. They just were quietly funded and
Speaker 2: were an important part of our total transportation package.
Speaker 1: You have written about how all these billions of dollars
Speaker 1: that the government has gone to spend in the next
Speaker 1: three years won't actually just buy and kind of measure
Speaker 1: up new highways. Can you elaborate on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were allocating seven billion dollars to these roads
Speaker 2: of national significance and another billion dollars in contingency funding
Speaker 2: to try to speed up that planning process. But that
Speaker 2: eight billion dollars really is just going to lay the
Speaker 2: initial groundwork for building these roads, so there's a lot
Speaker 2: of work that had to go into it, including securing
Speaker 2: routes and right away purchasing property, doing planning, writing business cases.
Speaker 2: So most of this money is really just going to
Speaker 2: go to those stages, and a lot of that will
Speaker 2: go into the pockets of consulting firms that do this
Speaker 2: on a regular basis. And what people won't see drivers
Speaker 2: or cyclists or people on public transport, will be any
Speaker 2: progress towards relieving congestion. And many of the projects aren't
Speaker 2: even slated to begin construction until well after this plan
Speaker 2: ends in t and twenty seven, some of them not
Speaker 2: even until twenty twenty nine at the earliest, so we
Speaker 2: won't see a significant movement here in building roads, but
Speaker 2: we will see a significant spend towards planning these roads.
Speaker 2: So we're spending a lot of money that could be
Speaker 2: used for other things with immediate impact going towards the
Speaker 2: idea of roads that likely won't even be built in
Speaker 2: the long run anyway.
Speaker 4: Labour's transport spokesperson, tonguing You to Kenny, is unimpressed the.
Speaker 5: Increased levels of driver's license fees at are coming in
Speaker 5: the driver's text that will kick in from the start
Speaker 5: of next year. The planned increases to fuel excise from
Speaker 5: twenty twenty seven. This is a government that is simply
Speaker 5: hypocritical and lumping additional costs onto road users.
Speaker 4: Julie and Genter from the Greens says local roads account
Speaker 4: for most trips and the balance of the funding is
Speaker 4: all wrong.
Speaker 1: New Zealand does have a bit of a track record
Speaker 1: of infrastructure projects being scuppered by future governments. For example,
Speaker 1: this government has axed Auckland light rail and let's get
Speaker 1: Wellington moving. Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop says workers underway to
Speaker 1: develop this thirty year national Infrastructure pipeline in the hope
Speaker 1: that political consensus can be built on an enduring list
Speaker 1: of priorities. Does that mean that these new state highways
Speaker 1: that the government has promised, you know as sort of
Speaker 1: future proof, and that they can't just be scuppered by
Speaker 1: you know, maybe a more leaf leaning future government.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an interesting idea, but there's nothing really that
Speaker 2: locks us into these roads to be built, you know
Speaker 2: the future. You know, National actually National Infrastructure Agency is
Speaker 2: supposed to make it easier to start to build facilities
Speaker 2: like roads and attract private investment. But really there's no
Speaker 2: evidence that a future government wouldn't be able to change that,
Speaker 2: and it's just not the way funding works. We could
Speaker 2: find somebody that will privately fund an entire road and
Speaker 2: then build it, but that's that's typically not the case.
Speaker 2: There's usually a high amount of public funding that goes
Speaker 2: into that. And anytime there's public funding, there's the opportunity
Speaker 2: for the government to change its plans. And we've seen
Speaker 2: with things like Let's get Moving, Wellington Moving and the
Speaker 2: Auckland light Rail, that spending can occur. We can start
Speaker 2: to plan and we can start to build a little bit,
Speaker 2: and political winds do change and projects still come to
Speaker 2: an end. So there's nothing about these new projects or
Speaker 2: Bishop's agency that would safeguard these road projects from never
Speaker 2: being canceled.
Speaker 1: Green Party Transport spokeswoman Julian Gender has also drawn attention
Speaker 1: to another problem that these roads could run into, and
Speaker 1: that's a graph in this recent National Land Transport Plan
Speaker 1: which shows n zta's revenue mainly from fuel taxes and
Speaker 1: road user charges, basically that it will fall slate short
Speaker 1: of its estimated expenditure. So does the government have a
Speaker 1: massive hole in its transport plane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, by current calculations, by twenty thirty, we're looking about
Speaker 2: a six billion dollars shortfall because of this massive spind
Speaker 2: up for these additional roads. And the issue really is
Speaker 2: that we have we rely on funding for our transportation
Speaker 2: system from fuel tax is one of the primary sources
Speaker 2: of revenue, but the amount that we are receiving in
Speaker 2: that revenue has been falling over the years because people
Speaker 2: have more efficient vehicles, so they're using less fuel for
Speaker 2: every trip they take. There's the introduction, of course of
Speaker 2: electric vehicles, which have reduced demand, and the fact that
Speaker 2: we haven't increased the fuel tax in several years and
Speaker 2: four years since twenty twenty. At the same time we've
Speaker 2: seen a huge ramp up of inflation. So you know
Speaker 2: what we pay now about seventy cents per liter from
Speaker 2: twenty twenty on, should have been raised to about eighty
Speaker 2: six eighty seven cents now if we wanted to keep
Speaker 2: up with the level of revenue. So we've lost about
Speaker 2: thirteen and a half cents in value for every leader
Speaker 2: of fuel that we sell, and that has a huge
Speaker 2: impact on what we can spend and what we plan
Speaker 2: to take on in the future, and as a result,
Speaker 2: we're seeing these huge deficits coming into the future. And
Speaker 2: the only way that we're going to be able to
Speaker 2: plug that hole is by increasing our road user charges
Speaker 2: or significantly increasing fuel tax, both of which are pretty
Speaker 2: politically unfriendly.
Speaker 3: Transport Texas by stealth coming road tolls, vehicle licensing, road
Speaker 3: user charges are all set to increase over the next
Speaker 3: three years.
Speaker 6: The first thing we did was we stopped the petrol
Speaker 6: tech increases which the last government had been planning. We said, no,
Speaker 6: that's not right when New Zealanders have been struggling through
Speaker 6: a cost of living crisis, and we've postponed those out
Speaker 6: to twenty twenty seven. So that's a really significant backdrop.
Speaker 4: But what we've also.
Speaker 6: Heard from New Zealanders loud and clear is they want
Speaker 6: proper highways, they want proper public transport projects, and they
Speaker 6: recognize that in some cases paying a small toll will
Speaker 6: mean that happens a lot quicker.
Speaker 1: And I guess the government could help plug that with
Speaker 1: Crown funding, but the budgets are looking pretty tight for
Speaker 1: the next few years, right there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: room to move.
Speaker 2: Well. Unfortunately, well there is a huge budget crunch. That's
Speaker 2: essentially what the plan is telling us now is that
Speaker 2: we are going to plug this hole with crown funding.
Speaker 2: Some of it will be Crown grants, so money. The
Speaker 2: government gives about three billion there and then another three
Speaker 2: billion in Crown loans. So just if we go back
Speaker 2: even five six years ago, our transport plans didn't require much,
Speaker 2: if any, Crown funding. It was all supposed to be
Speaker 2: essentially self funded through the fuel tax and through road
Speaker 2: user charges and a few other sources of revenue. But
Speaker 2: now if we look at the budget coming forward again,
Speaker 2: it was like almost six billion dollars in Crown funding.
Speaker 2: So we're actually relying more and more on rates pain
Speaker 2: than we were in the past ever in the past.
Speaker 2: So not people just driving, but people who are pain
Speaker 2: rates are now subsidizing our roads to a massive degree.
Speaker 1: And finally, tim how do you think the government will
Speaker 1: measure the success of its plan.
Speaker 2: It's a good question. We don't have a lot of
Speaker 2: information on that yet. The idea, the objective of these
Speaker 2: plans for the last couple iterations has been reducing congestion.
Speaker 2: Unfortun only none of the investments really are aimed at
Speaker 2: doing that and the idea is there, but the reality
Speaker 2: of things I conduce demand, which we've known about for
Speaker 2: seventy years or more, really mute any kind of impact
Speaker 2: we'd have on congestion from these roads. So it's really
Speaker 2: hard to say what the measure of success would be
Speaker 2: other than having a plan, you know, something on paper
Speaker 2: that says these roads will be built. That's about all
Speaker 2: we can expect at this point and maintaining the status
Speaker 2: quo for walking and cycling in public transport. But you know,
Speaker 2: for looking at this from a business angle, it's hard
Speaker 2: to see any KPIs that would really come out of
Speaker 2: this investment that would that would be a surefire way
Speaker 2: to say it's a success or not.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us, Tim, that's set for
Speaker 1: this episode of The Front Page. You can read more
Speaker 1: about today's stories and extincts of news coverage at inzipherld
Speaker 1: dot co dot inzet. The Front Page is produced by
Speaker 1: Ethan Sills. Dan Goodwin is the sound engineer. I'm Georgina Campbell.
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