Whether Labour\u2019s policy, capping public transport fares in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch at $20 a week, is the best way to achieve that aim is another question.<\/p>\n
Very few people commute regularly by public transport.<\/p>\n
Data from the 2023 Census shows only just over 130,000 people regularly took a bus or train to work (Labour\u2019s policy covers some ferry commutes too, and 2023 figures will be a tad low thanks to the slow pandemic recovery).<\/p>\n
About 90% of these commuters live in Wellington and Auckland. Wellingtonians are almost guaranteed Labour-Green voters at this election, but the 64,000 people who commute by public transport in Auckland may be persuadable, although a small number will already get free public transport anyway through their SuperGold cards.<\/p>\n
The big question is whether it persuades the tens or hundreds of thousands of people who potentially could commute via public transport but don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no easy way of knowing how many people in our cities currently commute by car, but might be tempted to hop on a bus or train if the price were right.<\/p>\n
Labour has itself been sceptical that low prices would encourage people to get on a bus.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Labour Transport Minister Michael Wood looked at ways to reduce bus fares. Photo \/ Georgina Campbell<\/p>\n
In 2022, the then Transport Minister, Michael Wood, took a paper to Cabinet seeking to make permanent a policy which temporarily halved fares<\/a>. He was overruled.<\/p>\n A separate paper, which contemplated making public transport free<\/a>, noted that price alone was not enough to encourage people to use public transport more, arguing that investment in more frequent services and services that reached into places with poor public transport was equally important. This justification was used at Budget 2023 to justify the decision not to keep fares permanently lower.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is also research indicating price alone will not encourage greater public transport patronage, particularly for low-income households. Public transport also needs to be convenient and frequent to be more attractive to potential users.<\/p>\n \u201cResearch indicates that areas of higher deprivation or lower incomes are not as well served by existing public transport services, limiting their access to employment opportunities,\u201d the paper said, in remarks rather similar to those made yesterday by Transport Minister Chris Bishop<\/a>.<\/p>\n A separate paper on half-price fares, written by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), found that they did boost ridership, but more people (15%) switched from walking and cycling to public transport than did from cars (12%)<\/a> – although this was at a time when driving was also subsidised through lower fuel taxes.<\/p>\n But the big problem for the policy isn\u2019t actually whether it\u2019ll work in shifting people out of cars, it\u2019s the way Labour intends to pay for it: $65 million a year from the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) \u2013 or $195m over the three-year period covered by New Zealand\u2019s three-yearly National Land Transport Plans (a kind of transport Budget, which, frustratingly, doesn\u2019t use the three-year periods used by Treasury for the main government Budget).<\/p>\n The NLTF is funded mainly by fuel taxes and road user charges.<\/p>\n National\u2019s campaign chair, Simeon Brown, alluded to the problem on Tuesday, saying the fund was \u201coversubscribed\u201d.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a gross euphemism. The land transport fund has always been \u201coversubscribed\u201d; the problem now is that it\u2019s effectively insolvent, requiring multibillion-dollar cash injections (itself a euphemism for bailouts) from the taxpayers every time a new transport budget is signed off by the NZTA.<\/p>\n Since 2021, Finance Ministers from<\/a> both sides of the House have signed letters of comfort to the NZTA<\/a>, the entity that administers the NLTF, promising grants, debt facilities and reviews of the organisation\u2019s funding to keep it afloat.<\/p>\n The problem is a simple one: fuel taxes are not adjusted for inflation and have been frozen since 2020, eroding in real terms, while infrastructure investment is extremely exposed to inflation and has spiralled out of control. If fuel taxes had kept pace with inflation, they\u2019d be about 20c a litre higher.<\/p>\n Add to that the political dimension. Infrastructure costs seem to move in tandem with politicians\u2019 appetite for promising investment \u2013 the more expensive infrastructure gets, the more politicians tend to promise it.<\/p>\n When the Government changed, transport officials briefed the incoming Government on $200 billion<\/a> worth of unfunded transport policy commitments from Labour, which would have drawn on funds in the NLTF (spent at about $7-8b a year).<\/p>\n The projects included the Auckland Light Rail plan ($14.4b), the new Waitemat\u0101 Harbour bridge or tunnel ($48b), upgrades to the rail network ($37.4b) and the Strategic Investment Programme<\/a> ($59.3b), which was Labour\u2019s name for what the current Government calls the Roads of National Significance (RoNS). Many of the roads are the same, although the RoNS programme is even larger and more expensive.<\/p>\n Nearly half of the hole came from promises made during 2023, which proved to be a very expensive election year.<\/p>\nSimeon Brown (left) was succeeded as Transport Minister by Chris Bishop (right). Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n