We though Labour was into this as well. Isn't there a group providing advice on possibly the first PPP road in Auckland? Won't tolling or some other form of user charge be essential if that goes through?
Isn't a toll a fundamental part of the Transmission Gully concept?
A number of businesses and business organisations are including us in their press releases (another new development perhaps being overlooked in the debate about the difference between jouranlists and bloggers). One arrived last week. It was advocating policies that all political parties should be adopting if they want New Zealand to improve productivity performance and to grow. This is what it said on land transport:
New Zealand has under-invested in road and rail, for too long and the
resulting bottlenecks are impacting negatively on our economic growth.
A substantial increase in expenditure on roads, rail, freight and public
transport over the next ten years above that already programmed is essential
if we are going to turn this situation around.
The current high oil price should not be a deterrent to investment in new
roads. It is likely that technological advances (e.g electric cars) will overcome
the effects of high oil prices and as New Zealand’s population grows there will
be increasing demand for roads. We should be investing now for the future.
There is great scope to improve the efficiency of road funding in New
Zealand. There needs to be more focus on commercial criteria and less on
political and bureaucratic processes in allocating resources in this sector.
The government should allow the use of more private sector investment
including public private partnerships (PPPs) and borrowing to fund the new
investment. This would help overcome capital constraints, accelerate
planning and construction and provide access to private sector expertise.
