Greens pledge cycle highways and ban on petrol car imports
The Green Party wants to make public transport free for under18s, ban petrol car imports from 2030, and create a $1.5 billion ‘‘Cycle Super Highway’’ fund to build five-metre-wide cycleways.
A bolstered rail system with trains travelling more than 100kmh between major towns, and inter-city light rail in both Auckland and Wellington feature in the party’s transport plan, announced by Greens co-leader James Shaw in Auckland yesterday.
Shaw said decades of underinvestment in public transport had led New Zealand to rely on cars, worsening the climate crisis.
‘‘We have a once-ina-generation opportunity to rebuild our communities in a way which tackles the climate crisis and makes our communities healthier in the long-term.’’
The party wants to reallocate funding currently headed to motorway builds to fund its transport policy, taking $1.58b from the national transport fund and $1.7b from the Government’s NZ Upgrade programme. Another $13.6b would then need to be spent in the next 10 years to fund the proposed projects.
‘‘We will connect our major cities through a major new investment in inter-city passenger rail . . . Rail will carry thousands of people a day from Auckland to Hamilton, from Wellington to Masterton and Palmerston North, and from Christchurch to Rangiora and Ashburton, eventually including Dunedin and Timaru,’’ Shaw said. ‘‘This new inter-city rail network will slash the emissions caused by the status quo of only being able to commute by car, as well as create thousands of jobs building the network.’’
The party also wants to fund a new ‘‘Go Anywhere’’ transport card that would work across all transport, anywhere in the country.
Transport would be free for under 18-year-olds, people over 65, and community service card holders, and the cost for students would be halved.
For those paying for public transport, it would be free after they reached a certain threshold each week.
Under the policy, a contestable $1.5b fund for Cycling Super Highways would be created. It would be spent on cycleways between two and five metres wide, provided the cycleway was continuous, linked multiple outer suburbs with a city, was fully protected from car traffic, and could be started within three years and completed within two.
The Greens want to copy the United Kingdom in setting a deadline on the importation of petrol vehicles.
In the UK, only zero-emission light vehicles (cars, vans and utes) will be imported beyond 2030.
Until then, a clean car standard would be set to require imported cars to be more fuel efficient, year-on-year, encouraging companies to import more hybrid and electric vehicles.