Only 1 percent of total land transport spending is allocated to new and improved public transport.

In Auckland the rate is even higher with 78 percent of people in agreement that the government should spend a greater percentage of its Land Transport Budget on improved public transport infrastructure in major urban areas or cities over the next decade.

“The Roads of National Significance and other roading projects are currently gobbling the lion’s share of government transport money, when what New Zealanders want is more investment to make public transport in cities better,” says WWF-New Zealand Climate and Energy Advocate Lee Barry.

“The futility of building more roads is not lost on Kiwis – they know fuel prices will rise and new roads will not help them.”

In the survey they point out that new or improved road infrastructure accounts for 59% of total government spending over the next decade, while new or improved public transport infrastructure accounts for 1.1%.  The chart for the current year looks like this:

Click for larger image

“We hope the government isn’t going to be too severe on the public transport spend. But we know they are cutting back on the infrastructure spend. At the moment, the national road transport fund, which is a petrol tax and road-user charges, is $2.8 billion a year.

“Of that, 1.8% is spent on public transport infrastructure. But the government is seeking to cut that back to 0.7%. What the government says is, with public transport, the ratepayers are going to have to pay it [almost] entirely themselves.”

If you are interested, our full submission on the forthcoming new Government Policy Statement is here, but the following two charts show how Government funding is being shifted away from a number of areas including public transport infrastructure, and into new state highways. ?You can see here clearly that PT infrastructure spending is being reduced, but perhaps surprisingly there is slightly more provision being made for operational subsidies. Quite why this is the Government hasn’t really explained, however this small increase is unlikely to be sufficient to maintain the dramatic growth in PT usage in the last few years.

Of primary concern is that public transport infrastructure funding is to be cut from an already measly 1.8% of the current land transport budget, to just 0.7% by 2021.

Our submission is broken into the following sub-sections:

• Background – current transport situation and trends
• Future transport challenges
• Comment on the Roads of National Significance
• Comment on local roads funding
• Comment on public transport funding
• Comment on the funding bands generally
• Future expenditure targets
• Suggestions about structure and additional information
• Conclusion and recommendations

Generally, the CBT considers that the GPS needs to be significantly amended in order to achieve its stated goals of boosting economic growth and productivity. At the very least, the GPS needs to articulate more clearly how its investment will achieve the stated goals, while consideration of future risks facing the transport sector (particularly from rising fuel prices) should be outlined.

Our full submission is here. Feedback closes on Friday 27 May 2011, 5pm. Send yours to

Join the campaign here.

Launched today at the Mt Albert railway station, the aim of the “Action Stations” campaign is to gain assurance from central Government that funding for a range of public transport initiatives such as integrated ticketing, new stations, ferry terminals, Onehunga rail and electric trains will proceed as originally intended before the withdrawal of the regional fuel tax.

The Auckland Regional Transport Agency (ARTA), which oversees public transport improvements in Auckland, has now been forced by central Government to apply for funding from the New Zealand Transport Agency for the funding of railway stations for Onehunga and other projects.

Campaign organiser Dr. Francis Reid encouraged the public to participate in the Action Stations campaign by sending key transport decision makers a postcard, which can be downloaded from the bettertransport.org.nz website.

“These projects need to be completed. The Government appointed Auckland council transition agency is threatening to delay all of these projects even further,” says Dr Reid.

Ancient tracks on the Onehunga branch line have now been replaced, but the location of passenger rail stations and how they are to be funded has yet to be determined.

“The withdrawal of $200m worth of funding through the regional fuel tax has left a gaping hole in Auckland public transport funding”, said Campaign for Better Transport Convenor Cameron Pitches.

“The ridiculous thing is the Government said they did so out of concern about rising petrol prices hurting people the pocket, but in the meantime petrol companies have increased the price by 5c a litre anyhow.”

Mr Pitches also spoke of the “deeply depressing” news that the Government had confirmed that it will slash up to $250m from public transport infrastructure spending over the next three years in order to boost expenditure on new state highways.

Total expenditure on new state highways is now set to be 22 times that of public transport infrastructure over the next three years, a multiple that Mr Pitches describes as “astonishing underinvestment, given the record 20% growth in Auckland’s public transport we have consistently seen year on year.”

“The Government is putting all of its eggs into one basket. Putting $3bn dollars into new highways which have not been assessed yet for their costs and benefits is extremely risky. If the price of oil increases again, it will look like an incredibly foolish strategy.”

“Central Government just doesn’t get it”, concludes Mr Pitches. “Aucklanders want more investment in public transport in Auckland, not more and more roads that only encourage more and more single occupant cars.”

The Government has confirmed plans to increase spending on motorways by $1 billion over three years.

Transport Minister Steven Joyce said the confirmation came with the release of the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding.

Mr Joyce had previously said the money would come from a mix of new money, increases in fuel taxes and reallocating spending within the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF).

Critics of the move targeted the $420 million reallocation as it took money from public transport and other initiatives…more

Rudman:

As Auckland Regional Transport Authority chairman Mark Ford noted, “to put it simply, where there has been investment, there has been growth on rail and bus”. These were 3.7 million trips that were not taken in a private car on our congested roads. Yet our masters still have difficulty grasping the obvious message. Provide decent, reliable public transport and people will use it. At both local and central government level, the penny doesn’t seem to have dropped.

Jeremy Sole:

There are also other concerns. While the Government is firmly committed to investment in transport infrastructure to achieve economic growth, it appears this will be subject to funding availability.

The recent $25 million a year drop in the lower threshold of the predicted spend range in the Government Policy Statement for 2010 and 2011 indicates Government’s expectation that councils will not be committing their own funds to roading projects – so not drawing down the Transport Agency funding share.

The federation’s concern has been what will happen to those funds earmarked for local projects, if they are not taken up?

The Government has recently agreed to allow unused funds to be diverted to other transport projects but the mechanism for this is not yet clear.

It is vital that local projects such as arterial roads keep rolling forward. One way to do this would be low-interest Government loans to local councils – restricted to essential infrastructure projects.

Yes. Every category of transport funding is about to be slashed apart from new state highways. We’ll post the details shortly.

Not only is public transport infrastructure spending to be slashed by 60%, but funding for the renewal and maintenance of local roads will also be cut by up to $225m over the next three years.

This means significant projects throughout the country in these categories will now have to be funded by local body rates or they will not proceed at all.

If the Minister of Transport is truly interested in investing in transport infrastructure for economic growth, he needs to be aware that none of the proposed roads of “national significance” have economic benefits comparable to investments in public transport and the maintenance and efficient operation of our existing local roading network.

Mr Joyce should have regard to the views of Local Government NZ, as he is required to do under the Land Transport Management Act. It is regrettable that the advice he has taken to date will not achieve the economic outcomes he seeks.

The Government has announced changes to the GPS. The new GPS has not been released yet, but the Minister of Transport has signalled his intentions with this document, which discusses the amendments that are about to be made in general terms, and also reallocates funding across different categories.

I’ve crunched the numbers, and the results are somewhat surprising.

The Minister’s reasons for changing the GPS are:

• to reflect the government’s priority of investment in transport infrastructure for economic growth
• to reflect the modal choices that are realistically available to New Zealanders

 “Transport infrastructure for economic growth” is code for building more roads, even though there is very strong evidence that the benefit cost ratios used for roading projects are fundamentally flawed. (More on this in an upcoming post). Reflecting “modal choices that are realistically available to New Zealanders” is code for reducing spending on public transport.

The upshot is that almost $1bn will be diverted from other categories into new state highways, in spite of the fact that none of the proposed “highways of national significance” stack up economically. The current GPS is here.

By comparing the two documents, this analysis shows the seismic shift in funding to new state highways:

Note that spending by activity class is expressed as a range, not a single number. So, for example, funding for public transport services will be cut by 45 – 85m (or 7 – 12%) over the next three years.

What is also surprising is that the maintenance and operation of local roads could take a hit of $150m over the next 3 years, putting more pressure on local council rates.

The Minister is diverting as much money as possible into the “New and Improved State Highway” category.  Even though it is claimed that building more highways will boost economic growth, there is no supporting evidence that this is the case. 

I can’t help feeling the Minister of Transport is rushing in to this. In the next post, I’ll explain why putting all your eggs into new highways could be a big mistake.