The short version
The central Government’s transport plan has vastly underfunded walking and cycling, leaving a budget shortfall for Auckland Council.
Over the next couple of weeks the Councillors will be deciding which projects to continue and which to pause. It’s an important time to write to your local representatives and show your support for investment in cycling, highlighting any projects which are important to you, and expressing your desire for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland to become a real world class city – with a safe, connected cycle network.
→ Write to your representative with our Letter to Councillors Cheat Sheet
→ Find Auckland Council email addresses here
In this article
- There’s a budget shortfall for transport
- What type of projects are at risk?
- What’s the process now?
- Interrupting the pipeline
- No budget to ‘build back better’ when roads are renewed
- What should I do?
- A list of cycling programmes and projects which may be at risk
- What are the NLTP, the RLTP, and the GPS?
There’s a budget shortfall for transport
There is a $561 million shortfall over the next 3 yrs for transport in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, with the central Government’s transport programme (NLTP, defined below) setting aside less than 1% of our region’s transport allocation to walking and cycling. Essentially our central Government has committed to funding the completion of cycleways which are already underway but won’t put anything towards getting started on new cycleways – which means it’s up to our local council to fund new local cycleways directly.
We’re not alone in this, many other Councils are feeling the sting of this Government’s National Land Transport Programme (NLTP), which prompted Hamilton Mayor Paula Southgate to ask the important question “Are we being equipped to deal with our growth?”
But at the same time, according to news reports, the central Government has provided a “record investment” in public transport, roads, and road maintenance.
How can both these statements be true? Because while the amount of money put towards public transport and roads is a record investment compared to previous investments on a per dollar basis, the numbers have not been adjusted for inflation (and don’t reflect rising costs). This means that even though more money has been put in, we won’t get more benefit for transport out of it. In fact, we almost certainly won’t get more done because the majority of the transport budget will be gobbled up by motorways – and just one road, the Northland Expressway, could take 10% of the Government’s entire transport budget for the next 25 years.
Which does make me wonder, what would it look like if we did adjust for inflation? How would that compare to previous investments? We’d love some data nerds to look into it and tell us.
What type of projects are at risk?
Auckland Council are faced with a funding shortfall for many projects which are ready to be built (shovel-ready), but also, crucially, for investigating the pipeline of upcoming projects. If Auckland Council and Auckland Transport don’t allocate additional funding to these projects, the network planning of cycleways can’t take place, and cycling is effectively left out of the future of our region. More on the pipeline below.
See also list of cycling programmes and projects which may be at risk.
What’s the process now?
Over the next few weeks Auckland Council are going through a process to determine what to do about the budget shortfall. On 18 September they held an open workshop to give guidance to Waka Kotahi and Auckland Transport staff for their investigation into the options from here.
You can watch or listen to this presentation here. And see their slides here.
The transport staff will be presenting options to the Auckland Council in a workshop after their next Transport, Resilience, and Infrastructure Committee meeting on the 3rd of October. The workshop recording will be available here for the public to watch afterwards. The final decision would be made sometime in October.
If you’ve been following the saga of the NLTP and RLTP you’ll already know that walking and cycling is vastly underfunded. For context, the UN for the Environment recommends 20% of transport investment goes to active modes, while Aotearoa is investing 1.4%. The transport staff at the workshop reiterated this: “The biggest funding shortfalls are smaller projects and new cycling projects”
For the projects where the co-share from the Central Government is missing, the transport staff or Councillors will be deciding whether to
- Pause the project and reallocate the Council’s share of funding from it to another project, or
- Allocate additional funding to it to enable the project to continue (presumably by pausing a different project)
- Somehow find additional funding (such as from increasing rates, which is unlikely)
Even the projects which have been allocated funding from the Central Government could be paused in order to free up Auckland Council’s co-share of funding from those projects. If this happens, the Central Government’s share of funding for that project would be lost from our region and even projects like Great North Road (which is supposed to start construction in October) wouldn’t be safe. So much of the community has contributed to the design of these improvements over the past many years, it would be a tragedy to cut them off especially when they are, in many cases like Great North Road, shovel-ready.
Interrupting the pipeline
Many of the existing projects we are discussing are ready to be delivered, like Great North Road, or are at various stages of their design and planning. However, there are also projects at earlier stages of the process – those marked for investigation.
For a cycling infrastructure project to be delivered, a concept is first assessed in an investigation phase, and then goes through a design phase, which typically includes public consultation and can take several years.
Investigation includes working out if the project meets criteria such as connecting into the existing or committed cycleway network, offering good value for money, prioritising connections that help the most people, and prioritising areas where safety risks are highest.
If potential projects are not being investigated, there is no pipeline of projects which can advance to design and delivery phases.
Essentially, if we turn off the funding tap for new cycling projects to be investigated, we introduce a long delay (likely around five years) before we can expect to see new cycling infrastructure being delivered. The transport agency departments who work on active modes projects are likely to lose experienced staff members, and potentially be drastically reduced or restructured, making it incredibly difficult (and more expensive) to restart the pipeline again once the funding returns.
Central Government’s NLTP has done just that – it includes zero funding for new cycling projects.
We dread the impact this would have on our region. As our population grows, the infrastructure to support it would become less and less fit for purpose. We would be going backwards relative to so many other cities around the world which are putting in place policies and infrastructure to reduce their emissions and create live-able communities.
In order to avoid a years-long gap in our pipeline, we desperately need Auckland Council to backfill central Government’s funding shortfall.
No budget to ‘build back better’ when roads are renewed
During the workshop, Cr Julie Fairey asked the transport staff about the budget for maintenance and renewals, which also has a smaller pot of Central Government co-funding than expected. In particular, Cr Fairey was querying whether there was still enough funding available to “build back better” when doing a renewal. Instead of replacing the road exactly the way it was (called ‘like for like’), ‘building back better’ is when elements of the road are improved during the renewal process. This allows for the road design to be brought up to modern standards and for crucial accessibility improvements like curb cuts to be delivered cost effectively as roads are renewed across the region.
The transport staff replied that with the existing budget that was available, ‘there is virtually no funding’ to build back better with renewals. They said if this is important to the Council they will need to add ‘local share’ funding to allow for improvements that are of significance to the local community.
What should I do?
The transport staff have asked the Council what their priorities are. This means it’s a critical moment for your Councillors to hear from you. It will make a difference.
You can help by writing to your elected representatives and showing your support for investment in cycling.
You could…
- Highlight any particular cycleway projects that you are excited for and want to see continue, explaining how they will positively impact your life.
- Express your support for “building back better” with renewals, a cost effective way of creating small improvements to our roads over time.
- Share how bike skills courses, bike hubs, and the e-bike library schemes have helped you – these ‘soft infrastructure’ programmes deserve recognition for their importance alongside ‘hard infrastructure’ like cycleways in supporting people to take up cycling for transport.
- Remind them of the multiple benefits of cycleway investment, and that cycling is broadly supported; 60% of New Zealanders are supportive of cycleways and after Auckland’s deliberative forum on transport participant’s support rose to 85%. On top of this, 85.5% of kids say active travel is their favourite way to get around.
→ Write to your representative with our Letter to Councillors Cheat Sheet
→ Find Auckland Council email addresses here
A list of cycling programmes and projects which may be at risk
Programmes with confirmed national funding in the NLTP
- Cycleways Programme (Lower Cost) ~ Māngere East
- Cycleways Programme (Lower Cost) ~ Manukau
- Cycling for Climate Action (single stage business cases)
- Albany Highway
- Kelston-New Lynn
- Manurewa
- Great North Road Improvement
- Urban Cycleway Projects
Programmes with some confirmed funding from NLTP, but not the full amount
- The Road Safety Programme (including ‘soft infrastructure’ like bike skills courses and bike hubs)
- Maintenance, Operations, and Renewals Programme
Other programmes
- Cycleways Programme (Lower Cost) (including the pop up protection programme)
- Cycling for Climate Action (includes projects all over the region including Hobsonville, Kelston-New Lynn, Manurewa, Albany, Onehunga, East Coast Road and Takapuna)
- Meadowbank to Kohimarama Connectivity Project (Gowing Drive connection to Glen Innes to Tāmaki Pathway)
- Māngere West Cycleway
- Supporting Growth (Active Mode Corridor)
- Walking for Climate Action – Manurewa
- First and Final Leg Programme (improving connections to public transport)
- Safer Speed Programme
What are the NLTP, the RLTP, the LTP and the GPS?
The Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, often shortened to GPS for convenience (but not to be confused with other Government Policy Statements), is the Central Government’s high-level transport policy. It sets out the Government’s priorities for the next 10 years, what kinds of transport projects it expects to see from Waka Kotahi NZTA across Aotearoa New Zealand, and what it wants to invest in – and therefore, what local Councils will be able to get central government funding for. Because a fair amount of our transport projects are co-funded by Waka Kotahi, this can have a big impact on what kinds of infrastructure we can build locally.
Following on from the priorities outlined in the GPS, the National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) is completed. This is the country’s 10 year plan for transport and includes funding for regional programmes.
The Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP), created by Auckland Transport and Auckland Council, is an outline of our region’s investment in transport over the next 10 years. It aims to identify the transport challenges we are facing now and over the next decade, and which transport projects will be delivered first. It includes expectations for project co-funding from the NLTP as well as Council funding.
Each of these 10 year plans are reviewed every 3 years, and are highly susceptible to changes in Government.
A portion of the funding to deliver the Regional Land Transport Plan is supplied by Auckland Council through the Long Term Plan (LTP). The LTP is the Council’s overall 10-year budget. Another portion is supplied by Waka Kotahi NZTA as outlined in their NLTP.
Because the current Government’s priorities are focussed on motorways, the GPS and NLTP completed this year both prioritise building new roads at the expense of vital walking and cycling projects. This has led to the $561 million shortfall in budget for our RLTP which our Council are now focusing on responding to.
Join us for an online group email-writing session:
Protecting Our Bike-friendly Transport Future Together
Tuesday, October 1 · 7:30 – 8:30pm. Google Meet link
→ Write to your representative with our Letter to Councillors Cheat Sheet
→ Find Auckland Council email addresses here
