Note: Please read the full post as there is info on how to make submissions to the Ministry of Transport at the end of it.

I’ve known about it some weeks now, but I finally showed Nikki the proof today that I wasn’t making it up (the article in the Herald) and she went off like a rocket!

Nikki: What a crock of shit!
I can’t believe they are going ahead with something so fucken ridiculous!

Stephen: Its to make you and me and everyone else stop driving

Nikki: Then get DECENT public transport….oh there is NO SUCH THING!!!
Even if they made it easier and shit to travel via bus train etc all of them would be overloaded with pissed off people who can’t afford to drive inot the city!!!

Nikki: grrrrrrrrrrr I’ve just spammed everyone I know in AUckland who’s email address I have :)

There are hundreds of people which means the frequency of the buses and trains would HAVE to be a lot more often.
Which means they need to buy more trains too.

Nikki: In the end though it doesn’t matter that much as I’ll move overseas….then they’ll start complaining about how many kiwi’s keep moving overseas
yeah for now. Then what weekends and public holidays too?
People in power are greedy fuckers…..when they realise how much money they make from just peak times they’ll change the hours then the days and frequency

And I don’t blame her one bit on this. She lives in Manukau and works on Queen St every day. So she will have no choice but to pay this new toll just to get to work every day. She can’t take the bus because she doesn’t leave work until at least 6. Which means that its dark by the time she gets home. Who wants to walk from the bus to their house in the dark? Especially in Manukau?

Worse yet, the trains that run through Manukau are all the way out by Ross Common Road, have no parking near them and no buses at all that run by them. Worse still, the platform is dark and very unsafe even during the day. Much worse at the dark hours of the morning and evening.

So what sparked this massive explosion?

Controversial options for pricing Aucklanders out of their cars and on to public transport cleared their first political hurdle yesterday after heated debate at a city council committee table.

Auckland City’s transport and urban linkages committee approved a submission to the Ministry of Transport accepting that a road-pricing scheme for the region was feasible and should be investigated further with a view to being adopted.

The ministry is giving Aucklanders and other interested parties until April 28 to respond to a mammoth report on a two-year study of various pricing options which could cost some motorists $750 to $2500 a year more in road or parking charges to ease traffic congestion.

Auckland road tolls clear first hurdle – NZ Herald

Now, I should point out that, with a few reservations, I’m not opposed to the idea of the tolls. However, I think the public transport issue in this city needs to be resolved first before they force us to start using it.

And this is the crunch I guess. For years now we’ve been getting the message that we should be working where we live. If you work in Auckland City, live in Auckland City. If you live in Manukau City, work in Manukau City. That message has been slowly getting louder for a long time as the traffic issues get worse.

However, this is not really all that feasible. With the exception of a very few, most people I know have to travel at least 10-15km to their place of work every day. Then repeat that to get home. It used to take me 60-90mins every day to travel the nearly 20km from my place to the city for work each day, and I live in Auckland City.

The problem in this case is more that people in Auckland cannot get out of their cars because the systems in place are just not sufficient. I’ve mentioned it before on this blog about how difficult it is for people to use public transport to get where they want to go across Auckland. Simply put, even with the tolls, its not going to get people out of their cars. The public transport infrastructure just doesn’t exist in a sufficient state to allow that to happen.

As Nikki put it, there needs to be buses every 5 or 10 minutes on all the main routes. There needs to be a far better train system in place. There needs to be an improvement in not only frequency, but also the number of routes available. Look to my previous example of getting from my home to the workshop.

But here is the other issue for me. While I have those reservations, I am not opposed to the tolls as such. We need to start paying for the improvements somehow. Given it is us Aucklanders that do use it on a daily basis, why shouldn’t we pay for it ourselves? Land Transport has enough of a funding problem as it is if you believe their stories.

Everyone in the country complains that they’re paying petrol taxes to help Auckland’s roading problems. Wellington is looking to start charging more petrol tax to pay for the Transmission Gully highway that absolutely needs to be built. Whether we like to admit it or not, just because Auckland has the majority of the population, doesn’t mean that we can say we should get the full share of the money from the central government.

It doesn’t matter that the Auckland region now has more than 1/3 of the population of this country. We cannot and should not expect to get one third of the countries funding. We need to start paying for our own amenities ourselves.

Which leads me to another suggestion. Given that Aucklanders are going to have to start paying for everything ourselves, maybe we should become a seperately governed state. :-)

Maybe, just maybe, this might be the catalyst that gets people involved in local body politics again. Maybe we won’t end up with Hucker and his poodle Hubbard next time round. Well…. Dreams are free ;-)

I’ll just leave you with an email from a friend of Nikki’s. Because this person works at the Auckland Regional Council, I’ve removed their persona details for obvious reasons. These opinions are their own, and do not represent the Council.

From: XXXXXXXXXX <xxxxxxxxxxxx@arc.govt.nz>
Date: Apr 13, 2006 11:01 AM
Subject: Auckland Road Pricing

Hi everyone

Further to the controversial article featured in the NZ Herald today on the proposed road tolls within Auckland ( http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10377299)

ARC will be making a submission (approval will be sought at our Council Meeting on 26th April to submit), we’ve done a lot of work around investigating the feasibility of this and whether or not we support road tolling.

I strongly urge you to make a submission to the Ministry of Transport – public transport needs to be significantly improved before this could be implemented otherwise it’s just unfair and unreasonable – what other option would we have for getting to work and back???

Here’s the link to the webpage where you can make your submission (make sure you read the instructions at the bottom of the page first). http://www.mot.govt.nz/business/land/arpes/

Let’s tell them what we think – the more public submissions the better!

(Just please note that this email contains MY views, which are not to be taken as the official ARC position).

Cheers everyone, have a fantastic long Easter weekend!

XXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (someone related to the issue)
Auckland Regional Council
Te Rauhitanga Taiao

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