Long-Term Transport Strategy Short-Sighted
August 14th, 2008
Transport Minister Annette King is predictably trumpeting the NZ Transport Strategy 2008 as a great leap forward for the transport sector. However, closer inspection of the plan reveals little real attempt to address the problems of the vulnerability of NZ’s economy to unstable oil supplies and prices, not to mention environmental concerns arising from burning fossil fuels.
Paving The Future As Per Today. King claims the strategy is a move towards sustainability – an overused term in this day and age which can be twisted to mean almost anything. This is just as well, as a plan which will see about 80% of the funding devoted to the road transport sector is hardly going to provide NZ with a more environmentally sustainable land transport system. In fact the proportion of money devoted to public transport could actually fall under the strategy from 17% in 2008/09 to 15% in 2018/19 if the more conservative of the two spending scenarios comes to pass. This is another classic case of words and rhetoric not matching actual spending priorities.
Intermodal Forgotten. Initiatives to boost rail and sea freight, for example, at best will be allocated just 4.4% of annual expenditure by 2018/19 and yet the Govt claims it wants to boost the amount of freight moved by these two modes by a combined 55% of all domestic freight movement by 2040. How anyone could expect this tiny amount of funding to bring about such a modal shift is beyond comprehension. If the Govt is serious about reducing dependence on road freight, especially for longer distance freight movement, it needs to put much more effort into intermodal freight infrastructure so it is as easy as possible to shift freight between road, rail and sea. It appears as though it will be a cold day in hell before this happens.
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