Govt to introduce congestion charge bill
The Government has announced it will soon introduce legislation allowing councils to charge drivers for using roads at certain times or locations, depending on how busy the road is.
After robbing Auckland of its ability to fund public transport and roading infrastructure by removing the petrol tax, National now introduce congestion charging!
Sleepy silly Hobbits, TDB told you National were trying to privatise the roads…
Officials tell Simeon Brown to consider tolling existing roads
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is being encouraged to look at tolling existing roads to relieve pressure on strained transport funding.
At present only new highways can be tolled to help pay for them, and only when there is a free alternative route.
But officials have told Brown they wanted to talk to him about exploring congestion charging “and/or relaxing the constraints on tolling legislation to include, for example, the tolling of existing roads”.
“Currently tolls can only be applied to new roads where there is a free alternative. Legislation could be changed to allow tolls on existing roads,” they said in advisories released to RNZ by the minister under the Official Information Act (OIA).
These also show the officials have taken this further.
“We have identified potential changes to legislation that would help us to simplify our systems and in turn reduce costs of the tolling system,” a briefing in February said.
The Government has already promised to reform tolling laws and spread the technology. RNZ has asked Brown if as part of this, he was considering tolling existing roads.
…this mutation of a road policy that National have trotted out slashes public transport infrastructure and is a naked attempt to push poor people off the roads!
This is user pays privatisation of our Roads, exactly as TDB warned you!
Bernard Hickey is scathing…
Simeon Brown’s road-taxing bait-and-switch
Govt unveils unmentioned $50m rego fee hike & fuel tax hike from 2027 to raise $650m and help build 15 new motorways; Funding for cycling, biking & walking slashed; Climate impact unmentioned
…he’s right and it is only going to get worse!
Barely a year after the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle, we are seeing what catastrophic climate change looks like in real time as roads develop mass erosion caused by extreme rain dumps caused by climate change.
We don’t have the adaptation capacity because we refuse to tax the polluters more.
You appreciate things are only going to get worse from here on in right?
Despite the climate denial from the Right in NZ, it is real and it is here now.
The $14billion dollar damage of Cyclone Gabrielle and our inability to rebuild highlights how little resilience we have in our underfunded system…
National’s response to all these threats to our roading infrastructure is user pays.
What the petrol tax did was generate revenue from as wide a group as possible to fund infrastructure, National have dumped that in favour of privatisation of roads with tolling and congestion taxes that will burn the poor with no expansion in public transport infrastructure to provide alternatives.
Remember our subsidisation of public transport was supposed to be an emission reducing tactic as well, so by dumping them will not only make gridlock more likely, it will produce more emissions that are feeding the climate change extremes we are watching burn our country this Summer.
So we open the taps on immigration (250 000 in a year) and rather than build the infrastructure for that level of migration, we simply impose user pays as the solution???
Whatever decision is cooked up will be for the benefit of a Right wing donor somewhere.
We are in the age of consequences now and we will choke on our denial.
Look at these numbers…
…road crashes were 4% of GDP!!!!
Our roads should not be privatised and they should not by made user pays. Roads should be seen as a common good with huge state investment focused on climate change adaptation, better engineered for safety and vast upgrades for public transport.
Nothing National have planned here will solve anything in the short term, medium term or long term.
This is simply about pushing poor people off roads and hoping no one notices.
At some stage, Kiwis need to take a hard long look at themselves for the hard right climate denying racist beneficiary bashing Government they elected, all because a bitter post-Covid electorate hated Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives during a once in a century pandemic.
Dictatorship government.
I understand this is what NZ First voters call the WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM GREAT RESET AGENDA. Time to rise up!
For this equation;
Income taxation = PETER
Road User charges = PAUL
Subtract from PETER and add to PAUL = Old Adage.
Well as a pensioner living out of auckland I dont give a fuck because I will not be able to afford to use my car .The rego has gone up and insurance increased by 60% last week .Then there is the $600 a year increase in rates so my $3 a fortnight tax cut is a fucken joke from the sadistic bitch .
The wealthy want the roads to themselves, and so it is probably better to have the right-wing bring in that policy than the left, for whom it would be the equally inevitable response to traffic chaos. My concern is not so much for the poor – who must shift for themselves, as they always have done – but for New Zealand’s capitalist class who seem to have lost the capacity to match policy to their own best interests. How will their workers make the journey from home to office or factory under congestion charging? For that matter, how will their products find a market in China when New Zealand, hand in hand with the US is manoeuvring towards war with the PRC? Perhaps they think that the second problem will solve the first? No market for their goods means no need for labour, no commuters and no congestion? Could we ask some five year old to point out the flaw in that logic?
Bob tf is sitting in the front of the wrecking ball because he likes a good rodgering or is he in the back because he’s the sheep that likes following?
looks like we will need more cycle lanes as no one will be able to afford to drive on the roads .
they’re going to need a lot of police, justice and corrections resources to implement their user pays police state – it 100% won’t fucking work here.
Years back I was a Dead Kennedys fan (yeah I’m old).
I’d suggest their song “Kill the Poor” should be the governments anthem.
Looks like they think the cycle lanes are a good Idea after all .They have priced the poor off buses and trains and now they are not allowed to use the roads .I see a rise in truancy and people not able to get to work with a resultant collapse in productivity .Yes the boss will get to work quicker but his workers will have to walk so he may have trouble getting his widgets made.
when we are all living as outlaws, what does that make the law-makers?
If you really want to fix congestion close the in gate at the airport for 3 years problem solved .With the record numbers using the out gate monthly the congestion will be fixed in no time .The other situation that would be fixed is the upcoming record unemployment and lack of houses .WIW WIN
If I am allowed a serious response to what may have been a tongue-in-cheek comment: Neither inwards nor outwards migration has ever been a sensible way for this country to escape its problems. Yet for decades they have been the only solutions on offer. Let’s face it, colonialism has no effective way of dealing with the state of continuous economic and social crisis which is peculiar to colonial economies. The colonial regime must go before we can start to progress in a sustainable way.
If I may be allowed a serious response to what may have been a tongue-in-cheek comment: Neither inwards nor outwards migration has ever been a sensible way for this country to escape its problems. Yet for decades they have been the only solutions on offer. Let’s face it, colonialism has no effective way of dealing with the state of continuous economic and social crisis which is peculiar to colonial economies. The colonial regime must go before we can start to progress in a sustainable way.
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