Rural-Urban Divide Opening On Road Funding
September 11th, 2008
It has been decades since almost every house and business nationwide has been connected to the electricity grid and telephone network respectively but when it comes to rural roading, the improvements in this area have been minimal and future prospects don’t look too good.
Bad Omen. Recently Queenstown Lakes District Council was informed by NZ Transport Agency none of the funding applied for to help with maintaining and upgrading the District’s rural roads it was expecting from NZTA is likely to materialise. The agency blames falling revenue due to lower excise tax income as the number of kilometres people are driving falls. It is unlikely this situation will be confined to one Local Authority. This pattern will likely be repeated nation-wide. This means rural roads will continue to suffer from a lack of adequate funding.
Urban Bias. In contrast to what is happening in rural areas, more and more money is being lavished on urban roading projects especially in Auckland. There does not appear to be any funding shortfall as far as these projects are concerned. Just co-incidence or is it the fact rural areas have small populations and few voters unlike Auckland? Although congestion may be a problem in cities, it is also likely spending $2bn upgrading rural roads nation-wide rather than spending the same money on a short motorway in Auckland will generate at least as big an economic benefit to the whole country. Is it too ambitious to work towards having 80% of NZ’s rural roads sealed by, say, 2040? This will lead to improvements in efficiency, safety and lower maintenance costs for roads which serve vital export industries.
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