Auckland’s Council wants changes in the parliamentary congestion collection law

Morning traffic crawls along highway 16 in Auckland.
Photo: RNZ / COLE EASTHAM-FARRELL

Auckland’s advisers are not comfortable with the congestion charging scheme for drivers established in a bill will be good for the region.

The Council Transport Committee agreed to make a submission by pressing on a parliamentary selection committee.

“The project itself will create risks to Auckland and the board is implemented in its current form,” the board officers told the transport committee.

Its president, Andrew Baker, said the bill needed to change to give Auckland more to say.

“There is very little ability to us … we can have enough information that scheme, which is really Wellington telling Auckland what is good to us and you know this is not something we like,” said Baker.

As proposed, the time of use of collection legislation introduced at a first reading on March 4 did not say residents of change, such as any increase in what drivers were accused or where the revenue was spent, he said.

“No public consultation or involvement with the board council should modify the prosecution,” the board officers told the committee this week.

The advice would take the reaction, said Baker.

“We are the first of the trenches when it comes to trying to defend this, and when you had nothing to do with it, it’s very difficult.

“Again, returns to Wellington telling Auckland what is good for that and what the rate will be.”

Then there was the problem where the recipe was.

The first call on this would be to pay NZTA’s costs for camera point technology, but after operating costs they are met, the account did not guarantee the financing of other important things.

“No scheme will work unless there are some complementary things,” Baker said, adding that “public transport is the key to any congestion charging.”

Otherwise, “it’s a difficult sale for people.”

“The bill does not automatically provide for revenue allocation to essential complementary measures, such as PT (public transport) or trafficking services required for smooth scheme execution, capital costs to implement a scheme or other local authority costs,” advised officers.

“The costs incurred by local authorities and costs for essential complementary measures should be captured in the scheme proposal and automatically funded from the scheme’s revenue.”

The project foresees that the board has a word to say about the areas to which congestion collection is applied and when.

But while the scheme’s advice would be half and a half advice and nzta, under the bill, the transport agency Waka Kotahi had the Baker’s Committee-The Committee was involved in this.

The advice also made it clear that the agency wants some control over how other schemes can be implemented, as setting up national standards.

There was nothing in the project on the reduction of the power of the Minister of Transport to have the final word, said Baker, but he did not imagine that the minister “just walked everywhere.”

Submission also said the legislation should allow discounts and exemptions beyond emergency services, “to deal with significant impacts of justice or cost on vulnerable user groups.”

Submission by pressing on changes in the main parts of the bill took a disadvantage, police told the committee.

“The main risks associated with this submission is that it indicates that the board is not comfortable to rely on the NZTA and Central Government policy process, as proposed in the bill, to ensure positive results for Auckland from a time -to -use scheme.”

Despite the doubts, the counselors wanted the scheme to arrive sooner or later.

The current track is for the law to pass, then another year before the scheme began, but the submission was that it should start immediately.

This would depend partly if the technology was ready.

The committee heard that it was important that the legislation is not supported by another bill reforming how Auckland transports it: transfers the transport policy and the planning of Auckland transport to the board and would establish a new regional transport committee with members of the Crown and the Council.

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