Battle for funds for road projects
Katikati among towns and areas fighting for cash
Ahalf-a-billion-dollar pothole in road funding has been patched over but key projects remain in jeopardy. Money is especially scarce for state highway improvements, public transport infrastructure and the Government’s flagship safety strategy Road to Zero.
This has come at a crucial time when the country’s transport plans for the next three years are being drawn up, and as the Transport Agency (NZTA) tries to find new revenue sources amid a funding review.
Western Bay of Plenty mayor Garry Webber spent Tuesday morning in a meeting of the district’s roading committee. He emerged newly doused in exasperation.
“Our frustrations are at bursting point,” he said.
“We just keep on getting kicked to the back of the queue. And this is regardless of which political party has been in play.”
Rural Western Bay town Katikati has fought for 30 years for a bypass to get big trucks off the main road that does dangerous double duty as the state highway link to the Port of Tauranga.
“Like all things, that will go into the concrete mixer, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it comes out the back end, ‘Sorry, hear your frustrations. But there is no money’,” Webber said. “It’s almost a charade. Every three years we have to go through this process of doing a hell of a lot of, you know, executive and councillor time working out what our priorities are.
“And as I said this morning, the 2004 document, the 2007 document, nothing’s changed.”
These meetings are taking place throughout the country, as council regional transport committees work on regional land transport plans to add to NZTA’S national plan.
But they are working under an even darker cloud than usual.
The Transport Agency, its revenues hit by Covid, has warned there is “very limited funding” and “very little room”.
Ninety per cent of revenue until 2024 was already committed to existing projects or just to keep the wheels turning. “This leaves very little room for project-related spend above the bottom of the activity class [for] state highway improvements, Road to Zero, public transport infrastructure, rail and coastal shipping,” Waka Kotahi told councils.
Planning could be a road to nowhere; as Stuart Crosby, head of Local Government New Zealand, puts it: “We know, at this point in time, many projects will not get over the line. Particularly in the state highway area in the growth areas.”
NZTA is expecting more will be spent on highway and local road maintenance, and on public transport services — as opposed to infrastructure.
However, that in part is just playing catch-up from recent underspending: By 3 per cent and 7 per cent respectively on highway and local road maintenance in 2019-20, accompanied by a 30 per cent underspend on cycling and walking, with many projects suffering from Covid disruption among other things. ‘A very difficult situation’
Things had looked worse still in February, when NZTA warned councils it faced “a very difficult situation”, and would start the threeyear period $250 million in the red. It also faced a $500m hole just meeting bare minimum demands.
Local Government New Zealand responded to that with a policy note telling councils that maintenance and public transport faced an “acute funding crunch”.
It said it had been raising the alert since mid-2020 about the pressures building on councils to meet their share of the three-year-plan costs (typically 50 per cent on local roads). The $500m hole now appears to have been plugged from NZTA revenues rising to $13.5 billion from $13b.
“And the forecasts may continue to improve,” an upbeat Transport Minister Michael Wood said.
“Overall, transport investment today is at record levels. However, there are always more possible projects than it is possible to fund.”
The “record high” of $21b is bolstered by $7b of Covid rescue money focused on a few select transport projects, mostly in Auckland and Wellington, though including a new stretch of state highway south of Katikati.
The South Island councils are suffering from FOMO — fear of missing out — as they, mostly, are forced to compete for the regular fund away from the Covid billions.
“Certainly looking at North Island roads, they do look in a better state generally than ours,” Tasman’s deputy mayor Stuart Bryant said. He chairs the South’s overarching regional transport committee.
“This is more frustration coming to us from NZTA. Obviously, they’re not getting the funding from Government, or haven’t been,” Bryant said.
In the national transport programme for the last three years 2018-21, project targets were regularly missed, with, ironically, budgets regularly underspent, sometimes because a road-builder could not be found.
Councils have until June to submit plans. NZTA told them it was “critical” they sharpen their pencils. — RNZ