Lost in the hall of mirrors that is Auckland's transport funding
Saturday, 26 June 2021
ANALYSIS: What once looked like the one Auckland transport funding plan to rule them all has turned out to be a hall of mirrors in which some key public transport projects are struggling to find their way out.
Right at the last step in the weaving of a funded, certain plan for the next ten years, a council shortfall in funding has surprisingly delayed some important projects by up to two years.
The later stages of the $1.4 billion Eastern Busway project – the major public transport investment in car-dominated east Auckland – is the headline act in a list of 15 delayed PT and active mode projects.
Mid-town bus access improvements are pushed a year closer to the end of the 10-year plan period, while the imminent start to a pop-up busway on the north-western motorway goes out one year further.
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The extraordinary consequences of a squeeze on the Auckland Council’s 10-year budget emerged on June 24 at the Planning Committee, and just a week before the budget and the Regional Land Transport Plan, (RLTP) get signed-off.
The “why” is easily understood. The how come no-one saw this coming during several parallel processes spanning six months remains a political/transport whodunnit.
The “why” is that the first half of the council’s decade of capital spending is dominated by several monster projects that reach their annual peaks, including the $4.4b City Rail Link (CRL), and the $1.2b Central Interceptor stormwater tunnel.
In years 3 and 4 of the decade-long spending plan, there simply is not enough in the council budget to complete the mega-projects, and accommodate all the important public transport projects.
RLTP is the umbrella plan for Auckland’s committed transport future. A core part of it is ATAP – the Auckland Transport Alignment Project – a supposedly fully-funded menu agreed between the council and the government.
It’s partly fed by the Regional Fuel Tax, council rates and borrowing, and government contributions from different pots of cash.
But, as it turns out, despite the protestations of the mayor Phil Goff, it seems not to be fully-funded.
A plan by the government’s transport agency Waka Kotahi to pull $179 million back, then a reduced $129m, got overridden by the transport minister Michael Wood at the behest of the mayor.
But the ultimate stumbling block appears to be the limits set in the council’s own 10-Year Budget, which is proposed and led by Goff.
Decisions made in the Goff-led process set caps on borrowing, which limits the capital budget, and creates the choke point when the completion of CRL meets the peak of Central Interceptor.
Getting the underground rail project CRL under way remains the council’s greatest triumph, achieved by Goff’s predecessor Len Brown – though Brown saw the inaugural ATAP agreement as similarly critical.
But CRL came at a price, the council agreed to fund half of it – half of the biggest rail or transport project ever undertaken in Aotearoa.
It is the kind of project traditionally fully funded by the Government.
It was, however, an elephant that everyone knew was in the room.
The questions still to be answered are: Why didn’t the mayor and council know the consequences of not granting Auckland Transport the capital budget it sought early in the 10-year budget process.
And: Why did Auckland Transport not realise until just weeks before signature day that it could not afford projects that should be playing a part in achieving the city’s ambitious carbon emission reductions goals.
The RLTP is signed off by Auckland Transport’s board on Monday, June 28. Phil Goff’s 10 Year “Recovery” Budget is signed off on July 1.