{"id":355298,"date":"2026-03-30T14:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/355298\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T14:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:30:20","slug":"fuel-crisis-auckland-mayor-says-government-should-promote-public-transport-over-driving-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/355298\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel crisis: Auckland mayor says government should promote public transport over driving"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wayne<\/p>\n

\nWayne Brown said getting people out of their cars would help reduce congestion in busy metropolitan centres like Auckland.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Marika Khabazi\n<\/p>\n

Auckland mayor Wayne Brown says those struggling with soaring petrol prices should be taking public transport, not getting an extra $50 a week.<\/p>\n

Almost 150,000 workers with children are set to receive financial support as part of the government’s fuel crisis package<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Brown believes the government should put that money towards promoting public transport.<\/p>\n

“There’s a crisis at the moment with fuel. It’s a golden opportunity in one form or another to encourage more use of public transport.<\/p>\n

“$50 isn’t going to buy them [workers] enough petrol or diesel to go in every day [of the work week]. This shows you how expensive it is to drive your car into the city, it’s slow, it’s annoying.<\/p>\n

“Catching the bus for $50 a week is bloody cheap. We should be advertising that. That’s where they should put some money.”<\/p>\n

Aucklanders pay a maximum of $50 a week for buses and trains. Brown suggested the government could lower the Auckland Transport HOP card fare cap to $40 while petrol prices are high.<\/p>\n

“Subsidising it a bit more would’ve been a better spend, and it would’ve been cheaper and got a better result.”<\/p>\n

He said that getting people out of their cars would also help reduce congestion in busy metropolitan centres like Auckland.<\/p>\n

“To pay people to carry on doing exactly what they did before, when we know it’s not a good idea to have everyone driving into the city, strikes me as dumb, really.”<\/p>\n

He said Time of Use Charging to get people off motorways during peak hours would be a reality for motorists in the city very soon.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wayne Brown said getting people out of their cars would help reduce congestion in busy metropolitan centres like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-355298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355298","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=355298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}