The \u201cstrategic tolling position\u201d would cover how the agency can deploy new tolling powers in legislation currently before Parliament.<\/p>\n
This position would be used \u201cwhen considering new roads for tolling\u201d and how that fits with paying for roads as a whole, NZTA told RNZ this week.<\/p>\n
Transport Minister Chris Bishop last week revealed a slowdown in when some of the highways would be built, saying National\u2019s commitments in 2023 were \u201cvery ambitious\u201d and circumstances had changed.<\/p>\n
RNZ asked Bishop if his revised timeline took into account the information gap from not having done a tolling plan yet, but he did not respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe minister doesn\u2019t have anything to add beyond NZTA\u2019s statements to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Large volume\u2019 of work<\/p>\n
The national tolls plan had been due in 2025, about the time the Government began taking a new look at how to pay for the billions of dollars needed for the Roads of National Significance or RONS.<\/p>\n
NZTA cited a logjam for the hold-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWork on the strategic network assessment and the development of a national tolling plan was deferred from 2025 to 2026, primarily due to internal capacity constraints resulting from the large volume of project-based tolling work that has been required in the past two years\u201d then pushed out again to 2027, it said.<\/p>\n
Last year, it said it was doing tolling assessments of a dozen or so RONS, including the Northland corridor to Whang\u0101rei, Mill Road in west Auckland and Tauriko West, near Tauranga.<\/p>\n
Recently, it has worked up proposals for \u2013 and the Government has agreed to \u2013 tolls on three new highways in the North Island \u2013 \u014ctaki to north of Levin, Penlink in north Auckland and the Takitimu North Link from Tauranga to Te Puna.<\/p>\n
Earlier, tolls were agreed for the 7km O Mahurangi Penlink stretch between Whangapar\u0101oa Peninsula and State Highway 1, north of Auckland, not now due to be completed until 2029. At first due in 2026, it has been delayed by slips and \u201cchallenging\u201d construction conditions at\u202fW\u0113iti\u202fRiver Bridge, which will also push out its $830m cost.<\/p>\n
Only three highways currently have tolls north of Auckland and around Tauranga.<\/p>\n
New powers to toll<\/p>\n
The delayed plan and strategy go hand in hand, and aim to give the new legislation traction.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the Government said all big new road projects must look at tolling, and it needed law changes to allow more ways and reasons to deploy tolls.<\/p>\n
The Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill that passed its second reading under urgency in June would enable \u201ccorridor tolling\u201d for the first time \u2013 where an existing (not a new) road can be tolled, if its users benefit from the construction of a new road in the same corridor.<\/p>\n
Tolls can be politically fraught. National Cabinet minister and Kaipara ki Mahurangi MP Chris Penk has posted online, telling voters he is pushing for better infrastructure, while emphasising drivers must retain the choice of a free road near any new toll road.<\/p>\n
A report back on the bill by the select committee recommended specifying that motorists must get at least one of four benefits \u2013 saving time, higher safety, reliability or resilience.<\/p>\n
It recommended removing \u201cefficiency\u201d as a benefit, saying that should be demonstrated through the benefits users get.<\/p>\n
The law change would also expand what toll revenue can be used for, beyond just for the new highway concerned, and its debt repayments and operating costs. Tolls would be adjusted annually by the rate of Consumers Price Index inflation.<\/p>\n
Where the toll goes<\/p>\n
Another constraint on more use of tolls has been the old camera technology. The transport agency has now worked for years to overhaul it.<\/p>\n
The new \u201cstrategic tolling position\u201d will operationalise 2024\u2019s policy statement around tolls, said the agency, \u201cconfirming how the additional powers contained in the … bill would be used\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin this, NZTA is considering the role of tolling in the broader transport system, such as its role in relation to other funding and financing tools, or network performance interventions.<\/p>\n
The existing three toll roads have fees between $2.10-$2.60 for a car and $5.20-$5.60 for a truck.<\/p>\n
The Northern Gateway Toll Road, north of Auckland, had 8.6 million tolls paid on it in 2023-24, generating enough revenue over time to pay back debt and potentially move the toll by 2038.<\/p>\n
The Tauranga Eastern Link Toll Road had 4.1 million trips that year and might be toll-free by 2037, and Takitimu Drive had five million and might be toll-free by 2031.<\/p>\n
From every $2.60 car toll, $1.46 goes towards debt repayment, 80c to operating costs of the toll systems and 34c to GST.<\/p>\n
The plan is for the new tolls to pay for the maintenance and operating costs of the road itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cstrategic tolling position\u201d would cover how the agency can deploy new tolling powers in legislation currently before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[806,2550,6119,738,266,14236,22528,3556,111,43,139,69,31341,21037,2170,1314,42032,810],"class_list":["post-534461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-as","tag-even","tag-faces","tag-funding","tag-government","tag-held","tag-hole","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pennington","tag-phil","tag-plan","tag-road","tag-toll","tag-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534461","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=534461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}