Auckland Congestion Charges: Privatisation by Stealth
Auckland congestion charges are being dressed up as traffic management. I reckon they are something uglier: a user-pays road system where wealthy drivers buy convenience and everyone else gets priced off the motorway.
In the last election, I asked National Party candidate after National Party candidate about their roading policy because I am a policy geek who reads stuff.
What had dawned on me was that National seemed to be attempting to privatise the roads and I kept trying to point attention at it because I didn’t think voters appreciated what it meant.
Three years later, her comes the road privatisation…
Auckland’s congestion charging is coming – and Mayor Wayne Brown wants it ‘ASAP’
Congestion charging will happen in Auckland “ASAP” and motorists will respond as they’ve done in the fuel crisis, says Wayne Brown. The mayor talks to Katie Bradford about what’s next for the city’s transport reforms
NZME
…suck it up suckers.
Auckland congestion charges are user-pays politics in drag
The Boomer King Wayne Brown wants congestion charges because he’s a rich prick and he runs Auckland Council for his rich prick mates.
Come on.
Hand on heart time, you have no idea what the fuck any of this is because you are nose down, bum up working your fingers to the bone to have any understanding of what is coming.
The functional privatisation of roads via a congestion charge that will allow the rich to drive while the poor can go fuck themselves.
It didn’t have to be this way.
Fully funding free public transport would generate the momentum for people to leave their cars at home and deflate congestion, but that costs money and it’s easier to punch the poor with congestion charges that the rich just see as an extra membership fee that allows them to drive around when others can’t.
And then comes the enforcement machine
Most Aucklanders won’t know this is happening until they are being penalised for not paying.
PS – wait until Aucklanders realise what kind of vehicle-tracking and enforcement network has to be switched on to make all of this work.
Seriously, what is the point of congestion charges?
Make motorists pay again for roads they already paid for?
Force workers to ride bikes like Maoist China?
(Two days of the work week it rains – hardly a commuter solution)
Cut out the FREEDOM of the car and force people onto inefficient, time-consuming, location-inconvenient buses and trains?
Or is it a conspiracy for a right-wing regressive tax on workers to pay the cost of mass surveillance for the benefit of our techno-fuedal overlords?
Is Labour going to stand with the people?
Are the Greens going to provide protection from tech billionaires?
Or will the fightback come from freedom-loving bladerunners?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tCKmWVM5iuc
(PS. re Auckland’s almost unused pink-gold-plated cycle lanes. Everyone knows this was just a huge rort for AT planners and civil companies. If they really wanted thousands of people to commute on e-bikes they would have given e-bikes to thousands of people and it still would have cost less.)
Yes, let’s keep kicking the poorly paid workers down the road so we can get our jollies! Life has a funny way of leveling things but in the end, be careful how you treat those who, through no fault of their own, have ended up on the bottom of the pile all because the wealthy make the rules and make sure they get more, much more, than the lion’s share! Now we are going to road tax these same impoverished folk who will find it difficult to get to work? Of course this will have a trickle down effect, the self-entitled won’t realise until the money trees fall over and their businesses / jobs go too! It’s only a matter of time so do suck it up, it’s about to come crashing down on you and your greedy life choices.