Cancelled roads could get green light

Details are beginning to emerge of just how the Government plans to spend its $6.8 billion worth of new road and rail investment, announced in Wednesday’s budget policy statement.

A large part of the money is meant to be spent by 2024 with the Government promising to increase capital investment almost immediately.

Eight billion dollars will be allocated before Budget 2020, with $200 million being spent that year, $1.4 billion the next year, rising to $2.1b in 2022.

The additional money is meant to plug New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit, but it’s also meant to stimulate the economy, which is why the Government is keen to spend the money so quickly.

But this opens up a difficult political question for the Government as many of the projects that are ready to be funded by this additional investment were mainly drawn up by the previous government.

These include 12 road projects that were re-evaluated when the new Government published its transport priorities in 2018. These have become known as ‘‘cancelled’’ Roads of National Significance, or RoNS.

It’s not yet clear how the $6.8b spend will be split between road and rail. It would be a large increase to both, however. The New Zealand Transport Agency, the Government’s road builder, spends roughly $4b each year on the transport network, much of it

The Government looks set to announce large roading projects.

on building and maintaining roads.

The NZTA appeared before Parliament’s Transport select committee yesterday, and confirmed that it had been working with the Government on a package of projects to be funded by the new investment.

NZTA Chair Sir Brian Roche said the agency had been working on the package for three months.

Roche confirmed that some of the projects that had been given to the Government to look at included RoNS.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson

said that it was ‘‘no surprise that NZTA would be recommending projects they’ve looked at in the past’’.

Ministers will dictate which projects get funded, rather than NZTA because the projects will be funded by the Government, rather than using NZTA’s direct funding from fuel taxes and road user charges.

NZTA chief executive Mark Ratcliffe played down the idea that the RoNS had been summarily cancelled and said they always would have needed central Government funding to get going.

The NZTA agency has been working on the package for three months.

Sir Brian Roche