Dear Auckland – suck it – National are privatising roads and dumping public transport infrastructure to doom us into gridlock
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown is lashing out at the National Government’s decision to scrap the Regional Fuel Tax saying it’s going to see important infrastructure projects axed.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced on Thursday the Government will be scrapping the Auckland Regional Fuel Tax from the end of June.
It comes after National campaigned on scrapping the tax within its first 100 days.
Speaking to AM on Friday Transport Minister Simeon Brown said the axing of the fuel tax will result in several projects not being funded.
“There are a bunch of projects which won’t get funded. Some cycleways, some bus lanes and, I am sure the mayor will be happy, less speed bumps,” the Transport Minister said.
Brown said the fuel tax is millions of dollars that have been taken off road users that were meant to build roads and instead have been used on speed bumps and red-light cameras.
“This is about priorities and ensuring that the money that is raised from Aucklanders goes to priority projects.”
When the Boomer King Wayne Brown is struck dumb by the Government destroying the hopes of public transport infrastructure in our groaning gridlocked city, you know shit just got real.
I kept asking questions to candidates about roading privatisation during the election debate series because the obviousness of where National’s roading platform led to seemed an important issue, but it never caught a wider focus.
Now we not only get the privatisation, but we get the pain of user pays inequality.
It’s all stick, no carrot.
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.
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Yep Auckland can suck eggs and walk all night to get to work ,but winny and cigaretti can gie over 30 million to some island nation for health and at the same time scrap our own brown health system .What a bunch of loosers you have voted in because you wernt allowed to spread covid willy nilly and kill 30k people .Sad country NZ has become
Who would have thought it. Aucklanders interviewed by RNZ are generally pessimistic about the cut in the regional fuel tax, as it effects infrastructure funding. Everyone else in the country should be too. If the regional fuel tax is cut, it means if Auckland’s vital infrastructure projects are to be completed the funding will have to come from somewhere else.
If these projects are not completed New Zealand’s biggest city will descend into a miserable polluted gridlocked mess. With impacts on the economy and well being of the whole country.
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national/aucklanders-have-their-say-on-the-scrapped-fuel-tax/ar-BB1i0RDG?
Aucklanders have their say on the scrapped fuel tax
Story by Felix Walton • 15h ago
Apart from the loss of infrastructure funding that the Aucklanders interviewed found worrying, what is not directly mentioned in the above report by Felix Walton, is that while driving a private car to work will become cheaper, public transport will become more expensive, making Auckland’s gridlock and pollution problems even worse.
https://at.govt.nz/bus-train-ferry/fares-discounts/public-transport-fare-changes-february-2024
Wasn’t good ol’ Wayne meant to fix everything after he was elected? Some of us warned them. Mind you, warned them about Luxon as well, fat lot of good that did.
I don’t think there is anything positive to say about Simeon Brown.
Of course they totally lied at the announcement. The bulk of the funding has not gone to speed cameras, speed humps, and cycle ways at all, but that’s par for course with these muppets.