Highway toll on the table
Paying to use the Transmission Gully motorway is creeping closer to reality after the transport minister was warned the $852 million road north of Wellington could be too attractive.
A briefing document from the New Zealand Transport Agency to Transport Minister Phil Twyford – released to Stuff under the Official Information Act – recommended the investigation of a Transmission Gully toll to ‘‘shape demand’’ for the new four-lane expressway.
The new road will connect northern Wellington to the Kãpiti Coast when it opens in 2020.
Twyford has since confirmed he gave the recommendation his blessing.
This signals a significant lanechange for the Labour Party, which did not publicly support the idea of a toll when it was in opposition.
The transport agency briefing document said that tolling the 27-kilometre gully motorway would help make the main commuter route between Wellington and Ka¯ piti more ‘‘mode neutral’’, meaning everyone did not simply drive.
When open, the motorway was expected to reduce the cost of road travel, which would encourage more people to get into their cars at the expense of public transport, primarily rail, the document said. ‘‘Tolls could counter the perceived cost reductions of travelling by road.’’
Tolls were an important part of the transport agency’s toolkit because they provided an extra source of revenue, the document said. They were also useful for transitioning New Zealand towards a more ‘‘responsive’’ pricing system.
‘‘Tolling gets people used to paying as they travel, and paying extra for certain benefits.’’
Twyford told Stuff he was not opposed to tolling roads if it was the right option for a particular project. ‘‘We were critical of the previous government’s financing of Transmission Gully through a public-private partnership because it increased costs over the life of the project,’’ he said.
‘‘Now that the project is going ahead under the former government’s arrangements, it may make sense to establish a revenue source to off-set some of those costs.’’
The previous National government inked a deal with a business consortium in 2014 to have the motorway built by the private sector. Once it is open to traffic, the agency will begin paying it off, along with interest, maintenance and operating costs, in annual instalments of $125m over 25 years.
But Twyford's position appears somewhat at odds with what Labour was saying during talks to form the current Government back in October, when the party’s then-transport spokesman Michael Wood said they did not support tolling the motorway.
‘‘My understanding is that past modelling has shown that a toll on Transmission Gully risks making the road so poorly used that it defeats the purpose of building it in the first place,’’ Wood said at the time.
National’s associate transport spokesman, Brett Hudson, said a Transmission Gully toll would be a rough pill for Wellingtonians to swallow on top of the recently announced petrol excise tax increase and Greater Wellington Regional Council’s desire for a regional fuel tax like Auckland’s.
‘‘Wellingtonians and other inter-regional travellers understood the [funding] model would remove a requirement for tolling, and to have the new Government come in halfway through the
‘‘It may make sense to establish a revenue source to off-set some of those costs.’’
Transport Minister Phil Twyford on funding the region’s new Transmission Gully motorway.
build, effectively threatening to whack our hardworking taxpayers even more, is disappointing.’’
New Zealand Automobile Association spokesman Mike Noon said he wanted to see the ‘‘maximum amount’’ of traffic using the new, safer motorway, and the idea of discouraging drivers from using it would be like ‘‘a safety own-goal’’.
‘‘It’s pretty dumb when you’ve put the infrastructure in.’’
Porirua Mayor Mike Tana said he was against a toll ‘‘because that would guarantee fewer cars and the removal of large freight trucks from our local roads’’.
‘‘We would not like to see Porirua people having to pay tolls.’’
The country’s three existing toll roads – the Northern Gateway, north of Auckland; the Tauranga Eastern Link; and Takitimu Drive toll road, near Tauranga – charge about $2 a car and $5 per truck.