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Todd Niall is the senior Auckland affairs reporter for Stuff.
ANALYSIS: Some of Auckland’s slowest-moving issues are heading for another spell on the back burner with Parliament to rise at the end of August for the final run to the general election on October 14.
Congestion charging, the future of light rail and mayor Wayne Brown’s eight month-old desire to create one transport plan to rule them all, have all moved too slowly to reach critical stages under this government.
A possible change of government in October leaves all the above uncertain.
Light rail is the most excruciating still-to-be-realised leap, with more than eight years having passed since council agency Auckland Transport floated the idea and believed work could start during 2016.
The rest is history. An incoming Labour-led Government in 2017 took over the project from the council, and may leave office two terms later with even the route and format publicly not revealed.
The mayor declared it a “dead duck, mate” in a March radio interview, but work on its business case, and design, continue in the government unit Auckland Light Rail (ALR).
A congestion charge for vehicles entering the central city was backed by a council-created “consensus group” in 2013, and a decade later got as far as being backed by a parliamentary select committee, before National took issue with details and prospective legislation stalled.
After he was elected mayor in October 2002, Brown made much of the absence of one over-arching transport plan, agreed with the government and in December announced the start of work on one.
Auckland Council/Supplied
A 2016 image of what Auckland Transport’s light rail scheme might look like in Queen St
Brown quickly had to drop his line that it would be “written by Aucklanders” and an initial timeframe of it being completed by May 2023, has long passed.
Following a change of transport minister from Michael Wood to David Parker in late June, there’s no sign it will surface in the remaining weeks, let alone be approved by the council and cabinet.
Parker and Brown met in early August, with the mayor’s office saying only that they “had a constructive meeting in Auckland this morning, discussing progress on the Integrated Transport Plan”.
The government’s August announcement it had opted for three tunnels under the Waitematā Harbour, seems unlikely to survive a change of government in its current form, and even if Labour forms the next government, has yet to face serious and detailed scrutiny.
Jason Dorday/Stuff
City Rail Link gets started in 2016. From left: AT chair Lester Levy, mayor Len Brown, PM John Key, transport minister Simon Bridges.
It’s not that nothing is happening on the transport front in Auckland, an interim busway on the Northwestern Motorway is nearing completion, the Eastern Busway rolls on, and City Rail Link is through the chunkiest part of its major construction work, following a sod-turning in 2016.
However, the future will soon be the present, and with population growth recovering to pre-Covid levels, Auckland and whoever forms the next government, need to get moving on plans that cut emissions, provide and encourage options to driving.
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