{"id":287677,"date":"2026-02-17T03:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/287677\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T03:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T03:40:08","slug":"government-getting-advice-on-tolling-auckland-harbour-bridge-in-order-to-build-new-crossing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/287677\/","title":{"rendered":"Government getting advice on tolling Auckland Harbour Bridge in order to build new crossing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bishop said the new crossing would undoubtedly be tolled, the question was whether to toll the existing bridge. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever ends up being built [a bridge or a tunnel], will be tolled. The question is whether or not the existing connection is tolled \u2013 that\u2019s a very big decision and we\u2019re taking advice on it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a range of decisions to be made about the funding of that project. It is in theory a project that should be able to pay for itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bishop noted it was one of the few connections in New Zealand where traffic volumes were so high, tolls could pay for the total cost of the project.<\/p>\n

Labour has not yet come to a view on the toll. When the party left office, the Waitemat\u0101 crossing was among the $200b worth of unfunded projects identified by officials \u2013 a figure seized upon by the incoming coalition.<\/a><\/p>\n

Roads of National Significance may be phased in<\/p>\n

Bishop appears to be readying a backdown on the delivery of National\u2019s flagship transport policy, the $56b Roads of National Significance.<\/p>\n

The 17 state highway projects were all meant to be started within the next decade. While work is underway on all the roads, the Government appears to be softening its commitment to building them at the times it had promised.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the Herald released leaked costings<\/a> showing the roads were tens of billions of dollars more expensive than costed by National at the election. More recent advice showed the Government was on track to spend a quarter of a trillion dollars on transport if its plans went unchanged.<\/p>\n

The Infrastructure Commission\u2019s plan singled out transport as an area of concern, noting that transport spending was well in excess of charges to people who used the road network. It also raised concerns that \u201cmega-projects\u201d crowded out investment elsewhere in the sector.<\/p>\n

Last year, Bishop made a speech warning \u201chard choices lie ahead\u201d<\/a> for the programme.<\/p>\n

On his way into the House on Tuesday, Bishop said he remained committed to the roads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Roads of National Significance are big, nation-shaping projects the country needs and we\u2019re committed to them. We\u2019re making good progress on them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bishop said he agreed with the commission that the roads are expensive and successive injections of taxpayer funding had shifted the transport programme away from being one that was primarily paid for by users through fuel taxes and road-user charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe transport system is meant to be user-pays. It isn\u2019t. As successive Governments have pumped more and more Crown money into the transport system, so it is now really oversubscribed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are trade-offs that come with Crown capital and we\u2019ve got an enormous amount of demands on purse from health, through to education through to defence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said repeatedly over the last few months, they can\u2019t all be built at once. The construction market market cannot cope with 17 roads being built at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them aren\u2019t even ready to be built straight away anyway. What we\u2019re developing is a long-term sequence and pipeline of transport projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked whether all the roads would be started within 10 years, as promised, Bishop said that NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) had started on all the roads already, although the National Party\u2019s manifesto suggests that the commencement date of projects refers to spades in the ground.<\/p>\n

Asked whether it was fair to say the projects would not be built in the timeframe originally envisaged, Bishop said: \u201cWe always said they are long-term projects that shape the nation and drive long-term growth and productivity. They won\u2019t all be built at the same time. They need to be sequenced and prioritised.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bishop said the new crossing would undoubtedly be tolled, the question was whether to toll the existing bridge.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1665,51,20217,1565,3269,3276,124,48054,27507,1866,295,8455,266,20589,78,1702,663,6722,5971,117,111,43,139,69,90,29691,61,42032,159995,36199,114941,8222,1955,5977],"class_list":{"0":"post-287677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-auckland","10":"tag-bishop","11":"tag-bridge","12":"tag-build","13":"tag-chris","14":"tag-could","15":"tag-crossing","16":"tag-existing","17":"tag-find","18":"tag-fund","19":"tag-getting","20":"tag-government","21":"tag-harbour","22":"tag-in","23":"tag-infrastructure","24":"tag-looks","25":"tag-minister","26":"tag-need","27":"tag-new","28":"tag-new-zealand","29":"tag-news","30":"tag-newzealand","31":"tag-nz","32":"tag-on","33":"tag-order","34":"tag-to","35":"tag-toll","36":"tag-tolling","37":"tag-tunnel","38":"tag-waitemat","39":"tag-warned","40":"tag-ways","41":"tag-which"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}