the existing Harbour Bridge<\/a> won’t raise enough revenue to cover long-term costs of a new crossing, the editor of an advocacy website says.<\/p>\nThe Infrastructure Commission has suggested a toll as high as $9 to help pay for a second crossing.<\/p>\n
Greater Auckland editor Matt Lowrie told Morning Report that the estimated revenue from the toll is between $7 and $9 billion, while the projected costs of the crossing could exceed $20b.<\/p>\n
When the bridge was first opened in 1959, motorists had to pay 2 shillings and 6 pence, a figure the Commission said equalled around $9 in 2025.<\/p>\n
Tolls were removed in 1984.<\/p>\n
Lowrie said while a second crossing is needed to provide more capacity, other payment options could be considered.<\/p>\n
He also agreed that tolling both crossings was necessary because just tolling the new one meant people would simply continue using the existing bridge.<\/p>\n
That would see a “multi-billion dollar piece of infrastructure … sit unused”.<\/p>\n
Lowrie suggested a lower toll be implemented to see the impact of it.<\/p>\n
He said the addition of the Northern Busway in 2008 had delayed the need to spend billions of dollars on a harbour crossing as the uptake from commuters had taken the pressure off the existing bridge.<\/p>\n
Whether a toll was introduced or not, Lowrie said Aucklanders would end up paying the bulk of the cost through a road tax or fuel taxes being raised.<\/p>\n
But the majority would come from Crown investment – and that had to be weighed up amongst the need for improvements to hospitals and schools, he said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Chris Bishop said the new crossing would be the biggest infrastructure project New Zealand has ever done.<\/p>\n
While the new crossing would be tolled, a question remained over whether the existing bridge would be tolled as well.<\/p>\n
“We are working our way through that. That’s a very big decision for the country to make,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Auckland Harbour Bridge. Photo: 123rf Imposing tolls on the existing Harbour Bridge won’t raise enough revenue to cover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[643,72,2158,113,61,60,43,2159,2157,2155,2156],"class_list":{"0":"post-302994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-podcasts","16":"tag-public-radio","17":"tag-radio-new-zealand","18":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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