john-ston, Thanks, That clarifies things immensely.

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Kevyn, unless the ARC is as confused as me, this is what is going to happen

“If, after consultation, the ARC submits the proposed regional fuel tax scheme to the Government for approval, the Government has announced its intention to add up to a further 5c per litre to the regional fuel tax to fund its share of the electrification project, and to support other roading initiatives, as provided for in the draft legislation.” (page 48)

This comes from their Draft Annual Plan – the government is intending to pay for it with the fuel tax, but should the fuel tax fail, they will run it with general taxation. Of course, the whole thing should be funded from general taxation.

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Cheery Kevyn.

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Sorry frog, forgot to put the link in for those editorials.
http://www.petroltax.org.nz/akmotorways.html
(in last sentence on the page)

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frog, in order to answer Stephen’s question it was necessary to step outside the terms of reference to provide the correct context viz-a-viz the Land Transport Fund. The only unfair subsidy I mentioned was the one for Wellington’s Foothills Motorway.

I didn’t blast Auckland for getting subsidies for rail electrification. I blasted the government for continuing to give preferential treatment to Auckland relative to Taranaki, Waikato and Canterbury when the original reasons provided by the government have been proved false. Perhaps that point would have been clearer if I had mentioned how much those four regions losses had changed since 1999. Auckland was -$1.8bn, Waikato -$1.4bn, Canterbury -$1.6bn, Taranaki -$250m. Taking a totally nonegalitarian view that we should always have had regional funds instead of a national fund we can go a step further and break those overall losses down into the seperate maintenance and construction funds that we originally had when the petrol tax was introduced. Waikato, Taranaki and Canterbury’s losses come almost equally from these two funds. Auckland’s comes entirely from it’s maintenance fund losing $2.4bn, 1.8bn to other regions and .6bn to Auckland’s construction fund. Very simply, during the 20th century Auckland was receiving more construction funding for it’s amount of traffic than most other regions except the four I mentioned as big winners, of which I consider only Wellington to be undeserving of that assistance. Note that Auckland’s construction “subsidy” up to 1999 had come from itself and if the petrol tax had been indexed to inflation from day one their would have been no need for interregional subsidies or ratepyer subsidies, and probably noticably less traffic growth.

You might enjoy this Herald editorial on similar shenanigans by Dick Seddon a hundred years ago, rail being the infrastructure dujour, and North Auckland being the provincial district getting shafted.

My point is that the Crown contribution has been allocated to politically “needy” regions rather than those actually in need.

The last increase in the petrol tax was supposed to be allocated on a per capita basis so why is Canterbury still losing one-third of it’s hypothecated petrol taxes and RUCs? LTNZ has indicated that when the full petrol tax is hypothecated Canterbury will receive only half of the money it pays to LTNZ. Yet according to Transit Christchurch has slightly worse congestion than Auckland and State Highways that are three times deadlier. SH74 between Lyttleton and the northern motorway must be the roughest peice of urban highway in the country. The northern motorway doesn’t meet Transit’s safety standards, a fact that two people their lives last year and yet Transit has no plans to bring it up to standard.

Is the half of the regional tax being spent on electrification to come from the 5cents to fund projects “identified by the Auckland region as priorities for that region” or the 5cents to fund projects “that the responsible Ministers have identified as priorities for the Auckland region”? What is the $285m included in schedule 2 clause 2(2) “for the purposes of upgrades and renewals of the below track Auckland rail infrastructure” paying for? I presume the foregoing is in addition to the $130m commitment to Auckland Land Transport in sched 2 c8(1), which presumably is in addition to the gauranteed 35% of regionally distributed funds.

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john-ston, Please read Sections 7 & 9 and Schedule 2, clause 2(2) of the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill 2007 for the government’s actual intentions for funding the electrification of Auckland’s railways.

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turnip28 wrote:
“however chch still has a single exchange point, when in reality it should have multiple exchange points…”
They’re working on it. However there are already defacto exchange points, outside Riccarton Mall (Orbiter, Metro Star and several radial routes), Bush Inn (as above), Palms (as above), etc. Waiting times could be a problem…

Trevor.

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Auckland isn’t getting any part of rail electrification subsidised. The government intends to use its part of the fuel tax to pay for the electrification infrastructure – i.e. Auckland has to pay every cent of electrification, while Wellington only paid for about an eighth to a quarter of its electrification & rolling stock.

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Anyone seen this:
Elections, Hot Air, and Gas

Perhaps some hot air, but we won’t find any economist willing to support this nonsense. Not a right-wing economist, not a left-wing economist, and not even a two-handed economist.

Applicable here too?

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Kevyn –
So who *does* pay for Auckland electrification?

The biggest losers from the petrol tax to the end of last financial year are Canterbury -$2.1bn, Waikato -$1.75bn, Auckland -$0.9bn, Taranaki -$300m.

So you blast Auckland for getting subsidies for rail electrification (half of which will be paid for by Auckland’s regional fuel tax anyway), then you point out that Auckland has a petrol tax deficit (Auckland -$0.9bn) of more than the $500m that the central govt is offering for the rail. Can you explain the math to me as to how Auckland is being subsidised for this worK? Your own figures suggest that they are just getting their own back.

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Kevyn glad to hear ChCH public transport has improved.

however chch still has a single exchange point, when in reality it should have multiple exchange points, most modern cities require this unless the city planners clearly define a point in the city where everyone is going to work, something CHCH has never done.

I’m sure someone can point out my problem with riding the Bus, Hint
I live in the NY area and I don’t ride the bus but do ride the subway.
So whats my problem with riding the bus?

My problem is that the Bus must share the road with cars and cars cause congestion which slows you down. When I ride the bus I should be moving considerable faster than you driving in your car. The only way to allow this is bus lanes. How do you put bus lanes into a city like christchurch it just isn’t possible.

If I move back to chch will i use the bus, the answer is no why becuase the city council hasn’t made using the bus better than driving.
I live in the NY area do I use the subway YES, why because its faster and easier than driving. You need to make both those conditions true in order to get people to use public transport, I just don’t see how you can do that with Buses, oh BTW I know quite a bit about buses and the CHCH bus system my dad has driven buses in CHCH all his life so I think that would give him more knowledge on the subject than anyone on this blog.

People will only use public transport if it is faster, easier and cheaper than private transport until you have met the above conditions no one is going to ride it.

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turnip, The CTB is dead and buried. Competitive tendering and all that. A covered bus exchange instead of the cold windswept square. Super low floor buses instead of the ancient Bristols. Shorter routes. GPS tracking ETAs to your mobile.

It might still be faster to treadly but I’m not young and stupid anymore.

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All polution released into my air should be taxed, might make them stop destroying my world.
As for fuel tax, i say WHERE CAN I GET A ELECTRIC CAR?

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That’s a big if toad. San Francisco’s experience is that the investment in BART had no effect on peak congestion and minimal effect off peak. The failure to get land around BART stations rezoned for TODs may have been BART’s Archilles Heel as gar as the minimal impact on off peak congestion goes. It was BART’s zero impact on peak congestion that triggered the research path that revealed so much about induced travel. That isn’t to say that BART failed to reduce total traffic growth and emissions, it simply failed to reduce peak congestion which is the only congestion drivers have shown any great willingness to pay to avoid.

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Christchurch has always subsidised Auckland and it probably always will.
No body in wellington ever listens to Canterbury.

I remember my commute in Christchurch when I lived their years ago it was horible. BTW Christchurch has a pathetic bus system so i wouldn’t call it good.

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So who *does* pay for Auckland electrification?

The answer is elucidated in this year’s NLTP. The motorists of Taranaki, Manawatu, Hawke’s Bay and the South Island are currently paying 18 cents per litre to fund the Crown’s contribution to the RLTPs of Auckland, Tauranga, Waikato and Wellington. Of the beneficiary regions only Waikato has extraordinary reasons to justify receiving largesse from poorer regions than itself.

The biggest losers from the petrol tax to the end of last financial year are Canterbury -$2.1bn, Waikato -$1.75bn, Auckland -$0.9bn, Taranaki -$300m. The biggest winners are Gisborne +$1.3bn, Northland +$1.2bn, West Coast +$1.1bn, Wellington +$700. Wellington’s subsidy is for the Ngauranga-Te Aro motorway whereas in the other regions the subsidies built vital tourist highways that the whole country benefits from.

Transit’s travel time studies March ’04, ’05 & ’06 reveal the following average speeds on weekdays 6am thru 6pm (expressed as per cent of the average speed limits on the survey routes): Auckland 66.1, Tauranga 67.4, Wellington 67.1, Christchurch 65.6 So much for the official reason for Auckland’s subsidies.

It seems Jim aint as good a negotiator as Helen, Peter and Winston

The fact that a flat city with no motorways and good bus and cycle facilities actually has more cars per capita, more km per car and consequently more congestion than Auckland (City) should alert us that something isn’t quite right with the popular theories that try to explain car dependence and ways to reduce it. Actually, Christchurch City sans Bank Peninsula is less densely populated than Auckland City.

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Toad, I know this is going to sound wierd, but I think that Muldoon was correct in cancelling the Rapid Rail scheme of the 1970s. The problem with the Rapid Rail scheme, along with the Busway scheme of the 1980s and the Light Rail scheme of the 1990s was that it involved the construction of a parallel network – the Rapid Rail scheme would have turned Auckland’s rail into a Metro, and that was at the time, and still is, not the most desirable idea – remember that we have to fit freight along our rail corridors too; and Adelaide is in fact a good example of how awkward it is to have two parallel corridors (the Belair Line there has one line for freight and one line for suburban services, both of different gauges, and there have been campaigns for over a decade now to make both lines standard gauge, the latest one being spearheaded by the Family First Party).

Had Myer-Robinson proposed something along the lines of Brisbane’s electrification plans of that era – i.e. 25kV AC electrification along the existing network plus expansion, then I think we would have had electrification far sooner and maybe ended up with some EMUs that looked like Brisbane’s first generation EMUs. Let us not forget that the same government paid $600 million for NIMT electrification from Hamilton to Palmerston North; the same government paid $33 million for the Ganz Units and the same government funded the electrification of the Paraparaumu to Paekakariki section. Muldoon himself acknowledged that Auckland would need a good rail system. The problem wasn’t so much the idea but the execution – Myer-Robinson had a good overall idea (electrification), but the details were lacking (standard gauge at 750V DC on third rail).

In terms of National not supporting it from direct taxation, I believe their announcement would suggest otherwise. They are perfectly willing to carry on with the status quo, even if it means supporting it from general taxation, while they sort out an alternative, so I don’t think that the idea of electrification is under threat. The fuel tax is under threat from them though, and I believe it is fair, considering that Aucklanders contributed millions of pounds and millions of dollars to the afore mentioned projects (EDs, EWs, &c).

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john-ston – fair point, but recall that the Muldoon Government vetoed electrification 30 years or so ago.

Neither Labour or National appear to support paying for it directly from general taxation (unfortunately), so what are the choices now?

And if it means a public transport system that is more reliable, has more capacity, is more frequent, is cheaper, and thereby gets unnecessary passenger vehicles off the road and relieves road traffic congestion, then it has to be good for motorists who will pay the tax too.

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I wouldn’t have a blaaardy clue.

So who *does* pay for Auckland electrification?

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Alright, for all you Greenies out there, why should a fuel tax pay for Auckland electrification? And before you answer, consider the following:

Who paid for Wellington’s electrification?
Who paid for the ED locomotives?
Who paid for the EW locomotives?
Who paid for the English Electric Units?
Who paid for the Ganz Mavag Units?
Who is going to pay for the Korean Units?

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