Transport Minister sets Golden (Mile) rule – make changes and lose government cash

Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Government Minister Simeon Brown has given a wide-ranging speech to a Wellington audience covering the Golden Mile, pipes, and the Cook Strait crossing.

Transport Minister Simeon Brown has warned the Wellington City Council that it will only get government cash for the Golden Mile if it keeps to its existing design.

In a wide ranging talk – covering the Cook Strait crossing, failing pipes and congestion charging – at Wellington’s Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday morning, Brown took a few pot shots at the local council including its “unacceptable” recent rates rises.

Brown told the breakfast that the Government was locked in to co-funding its Golden Mile improvements, via NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, because it was agreed to under the previous government. But any change in scope would mean it would have to go back to the transport agency and this time it would be measured under the new Government’s priorities.

A spokeswoman from Mayor Tory Whanau’s office said the final plans for the Golden Mile were almost completed with no significant changes from the plan agreed with Waka Kotahi.

The Wellington City Council is locked in to Golden Mile planned changes if it wants to keep government funding.

Waka Kotahi is locked in to cover 60% of the cost of the $139.4m project, a complete revamp of the main drag from Lambton Quay to Courtenay Place, but as the council learned with another nearby project, any big changes can push all the costs back to ratepayers.

Waka Kotahi had agreed to share the cost of a revamp on Thorndon Quay and Hutt Rd but, once the council removed the Hutt Rd component, it had to be reassessed against new priorities and it lost government funding. It means the council is having to cover the cost of the project which includes new cycle and bus lanes, as well as pedestrian crossings.

Brown earlier made it clear where the Government’s transport priorities lay. It had no issue with bikes or other forms of transport but was taking a “back to basics” approach.

Thorndon Quay in Wellington has been going through a major revamp.

“Most people get around in cars,” he said.

Wellington is on track to have 30km of new bike lanes by the end of the year, but the fast changes are leaving behind a trail of disgruntled shopkeepers.

Brown kicked off his speech congratulating those who made the “arduous journey” into Wellington city, past leaking pipes, an “infestation of speed bumps” and the “memorial to Let’s Get Wellington Moving”.

That was the $2.4m Cobham Drive pedestrian crossing that was “used twice a day”. The controversial crossing is widely cited, if not entirely correctly, as the only physical evidence that the capital’s now-ditched Let’s Get Wellington Moving transport overhaul ever existed.

Brown was talking as a major Wellington pipe burst under Cambridge Tce and not long after the Government, responding to decades of underinvestment in pipes, changed rules to allow councils to borrow more to get on top of the issue.

But Brown made it clear that the Government was not riding to the rescue.

“There is no government money – we are not going to be bailing out councils.”

Another recent government announcement was a law change to allow councils to introduce congestion charging but Brown stressed any money made above set up costs could not be used as revenue raising and must go back towards “improving the efficiency of the network”.