by Gareth Hughes
This is just a quick reminder that if you haven’t made a submission on the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding then please do so before 5 pm, Friday, the 27th of May.
That’s tomorrow! Just one more sleep. There’s not much time left but that’s ok because if you use my handy online submission form it will only take you a few minutes.
I’ve blogged before about why it’s so important to submit on the GPS but just to cover the basic facts again. This document will influence how the government spends $38 billion of funds on transport over the next 10 years.
Right now the balance of funding in this report is all wrong. The government will spend $7 on building and maintaining roads for every $1 they spend on building or maintaining public transport services, walking and cycling infrastructure.
The government is also planning to spend over $13 billion on new motorways over the next 10 years. Many of these motorways will be disastrous environmentally and also have poor economic justification.
The government’s plan are particularly crazy given that traffic on most of our state highways is dropping while public transport patronage is soaring in Auckland (our biggest city).
So if you’d like a more sensible transport funding policy, one that prepares us for rapidly fluctuating and rising oil prices, helps to reduce our impacts on the climate, and invests the scarce funds we have more wisely to get greater economic benefits please submit now.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Thu, May 26th, 2011
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Cheers Gareth. I’m one of those who hasn’t quite got round to it, so a timely reminder. I’ll try to rattle a quick submission off this evening.
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Who Governs the Govt? Ah thats right we do.. Ah maybe not.
We need another ROBIN HOOD,as this Govt tightens the belt on nzers to prop up the money men. Rons is an excuse to widen/ Straighten & build rds for the super Trucks.Slashing Kiwi Bank as too expensive to retain as is, but borrowing huge for Rds that have less traffic on now than days gone by.
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Nice idea, Gareth, but what confidence should we have that the GPS would make any difference to what actually happens, anyway?
Didn’t the last GPS insist on “value for money”? And aren’t we spending billions on roads which we expect to make an economic loss on?
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This ifnmoratoin is off the hizool!
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