Yesterday I looked at the Regional Land Transport Programme in quite a bit of detail, so I’m not going to rehash everything I said in that post obviously. The main point I came to was that ARTA had done their best to ignore the stupid changes to the government policy statement for transport – and good on them for doing so. This becomes more obvious when you look at the differences between what the government anticipated ARTA spending their money on and what ARTA is actually proposing. For a start, it’s useful to actually have a look at what the government’s proposed changes would have actually meant:
It took me a while to get my head around this table, but what it basically outlines is a comparison between the continuation of current funding arrangements (column one) with the funding levels proposed by the 2008 GPS (column two) and the 2009 GPS (column three). The key “activity class” that I always focus on is “Public Transport Infrstructure”. This includes things like bus interchange upgrades, ferry terminal constrction, railway station upgrades that aren’t covered by Ontrack, integrated ticketing funding and so forth. I have to put the following sentence in bold because it really hits the nail on the head when it comes to showing how utterly pathetic the GPS is. Under the government policy statement ARTA would have $297 million LESS to spend on public transport infrastructure over the next three years than what a continuation of current funding levels would provide. That is a pretty staggeringly bad figure. Meanwhile, the GPS would provide $463 million MORE for building state highways in the Auckland Region than what current levels would provide. Talk about robbing public transport to build motorways! The other big loser from the GPS is funding for new and improved local roads – quite bizarre considering ARTA’s number one priority is to improve arterial routes. It makes me wonder whether the Ministry of Transport discussed their GPS with ARTA at all when preparing it.
Fortunately, as I outlined above, ARTA have done their best to ignore the stupidity of the GPS. This is shown in the figure below:
The key figure in this table is the one on the far right which compares how NZTA funds required by ARTA for the various activity classes (column 2) compares with what the GPS expects ARTA to spend the money on (column 4). We see an over-spend on our key class – public transport infrastructure – and an underspend on pretty much everything else. Looks a bit like ARTA giving the GPS the proverbial middle finger to me. And damn good on them for doing so!
Yet before I can be accused of being too kind towards ARTA, there are couple of things that are still pretty unacceptable in my opinion. The first is that for all the battling against the GPS that ARTA have managed, we will still see a decrease in funding levels for public transport infrastructure over the next three years compared to what a continuation of current funding would provide – from $432 million to $359 million. This comes at a time when public transport patronage continues to boom and traffic levels on our roads and motorways continues to decline. Secondly, a deeper look into what we might expect to see from their 10 year Auckland Transport Plan when it is finally released (maybe they’re too embarrassed to publish it on their website yet) reveals some incredibly worrying trends in transport funding over the next decade. These are clearly highlighted in the graph below:
Once again, if we focus on the key activity class of Public Transport Infrastructure we see an absolutely woeful projection. This is even highlighted by the RLTP:
There is a signifi cant decrease in expenditure on passenger transport infrastructure from $141 million in 2009/10 to about $8 million in 2018/19. This includes rail-related infrastructure but not electrification or electric trains. It represents a potentially worrying trend as the expenditure on public transport services is forecast to increase. A declining expenditure on passenger transport infrastructure such as bus priority measures will significantly reduce the benefi ts from, and increase the costs of, providing improved public transport services.
A worrying trend? Is that the under-statement of the century I wonder? Let’s just repeat what ARTA are proposing here for spending on public transport infrastructure over the next 10 years – the very 10 years that we will need to respond to the effects of peak oil, provide for continued increasing patronage of public transport, somehow cut the emissions from our transport sector – a decrease in funding from $141 million to $8 million. That’s beyond unacceptable, I think it’s almost criminal.
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