Twyford open to talking transport
Transport Minister Phil Twyford will be willing to listen to new proposals from the Wellington City Council about the controversial sequencing of the $6.4 billion transport plan Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) following Andy Foster’s election as mayor.
But the Beehive cautions that any move to change the plan’s cost-sharing arrangement – split 60-40 between central Government and the city council – is absolutely not up for negotiation.
The current plan is to start building mass rapid transit first (likely in the form of a tracked or trackless tram), followed by a second Mt Victoria tunnel in
2029. It also includes a more pedestrian and cycle-friendly downtown Wellington.
And even if the Centre Right-leaning but selectively anti-development Foster was able to reopen the plan, he’d face a central government bureaucracy geared against bringing forward construction of tunnels at Mt Victoria and the Basin Reserve.
LGWM was thrown into doubt following the election of new mayor Foster, who has been critical of the proposal – in particular, the decision to build public transport ahead of a second Mt Victoria tunnel – a traffic bottleneck between the airport and the CBD.
The Beehive is quietly confident that it still has the upper hand on any move to undo the current plan. This means that despite winning the mayoralty, the fiscally conservative Foster faces an uphill battle to even get his case heard.
LGWM is not an agreement between mayor and minister but rather between Wellington City and regional councils and the Crown.
That means that any plan to open it up for negotiation would need to go through the council first and while Foster’s election is a step rightward for the mayoralty, the council’s leftward tilt was confirmed by this weekend’s elections.
Twyford has indicated he would be willing to listen to any proposals put forward by the council were Foster somehow able to reopen the agreement.
Reopening cost-sharing was off the table but the Government is open to discussing sequencing, including bringing forward construction of the second Mt Victoria tunnel and a tunnel at the Basin Reserve. But even resequencing these projects wouldn’t necessarily mean they would be built first.
Foster would come up against a bureaucratic wall in the form of the New Zealand Transport Agency, which has undergone some fairly radical changes since former mayor Justin Lester negotiated the current package with Twyford.
This is because changing the order of Let’s Get Wellington Moving projects isn’t the last word on what gets built first. They would all first go to what is called a ‘‘business case’’ stage.
Foster has said he doubts the business case for mass rapid transit will stack up and a year ago, he might have had an ally in NZTA, which was then focused squarely on road-building.
He would also have had allies in Treasury and the Ministry of Transport – which also questioned the Government’s chosen sequencing – fearing that mass rapid transit first would lead to congestion which a second tunnel might alleviate.
But things have changed. The agency has an almost entirely new board, which is known to be far more disposed to mass rapid transit, and far closer to Twyford and his Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter.
NZTA must also still keep any decisions in line with the Government Policy Statement (GPS) on land transport, which is essentially the Government’s way of telling NZTA what it would like built and how much the transport agency should spend on it.
The current GPS explicitly prioritised public transport and mass rapid transit, meaning NZTA would be unlikely to look favourably on a plan to pull roading projects up the priorities list.
Yet Foster has one card up his sleeve. In 2017, he was a candidate for NZ First. He could find an ally in NZ First MP Shane Jones, who is the associate transport minister.
But it would be a mistake to overstate Foster’s sway in the Beehive. He was ranked at 18 on the party list. Quite low for a party that would have to double its support to return him to Parliament.
Jones’ ministerial delegations as associate minister are for KiwiRail, regional road projects, and logistics, meaning he has far less sway over projects like Let’s Get Wellington Moving.
That said, as minister, Jones is by far the most sceptical of rapid transit proposals. He could see Foster’s scepticism as a chance to exert influence.