They would be:
- To remove the complex funding arrangements for different types of transport projects, where you have perverse situations like NZTA promoting a Northern Busway extension to Orewa that would be completely pointless because they have the funds but can’t direct them to more necessary projects like Auckland’s CBD Rail Tunnel. What we need is one pot of transport funding – that comes from a variety of sources such as petrol taxes, RUCs, local government contributions and crown grants – that all transport projects can be funded from. This would also allow us to compare projects like the Waterview Connection with the CBD Rail Tunnel, to work out which is the best use of that $1.4 billion of funding.
- Fix up the way transport projects are analysed or “appraised”. Currently, we have a farcical situation where something like the Waterview Connection can be allocated $2.8 billion of “time-savings benefits”, that are criticised enormously internationally for their neglect of induced demand, the way they place a set value on all trips – even off-peak ones, and the fact that if it was so valuable to give everyone more free-time, the government should buy us all a dishwasher. I suggest something like the New Approach to Appraisal that the UK now uses to appraise transport projects – which focuses on how a project has economic, safety, environmental, accessibility and integration benefits. By focusing more on “how a project would improve accessibility” as a replacement for the crude system of time-savings benefits, we would put public transport projects on more of a level-pegging with roading projects.
I thought about including the removal of minimum parking requirements as a third thing I would like to change, but that’s more of a land-use planning issue than a transport policy issue.
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We used to have one pot of funding, it was removed by the Land Transport Management Act, with the Greens supporting it.
The appraisal methodology question is interesting. Time savings are valuable to business users, less valuable for leisure, but people do value time – a lot. One way of looking at it is treating motoring taxes as payment for a service, what would road users want that money to be spent on to improve their trip. Generally speaking they want less travel time, safer trips and smoother journeys, so any spending that does this is justified. Another is that any such spending should be about increasing overall net national wealth, which means expenditure that reduces waste (e.g. fuel wastage) and increases productivity (e.g. less time spent travelling).
The problem with NATA is that it has layered upon itself the double counting of benefits, and so means that some esoteric views on wider economic benefits are presented, based on professional judgment rather than robust modelling. I’d personally prefer a raw BCR approach based on costs, monetised benefits and then ranking influenced by explicit strategic judgment. For example, while the Greens harp on about induced traffic, this only tends to happen in particular circumstances (it was never going to happen from the Wellington inner city bypass as the roads at either end are heavily constrained).
In other words, it’s all far more complicated than most people think. Public transport induces trips that would never have happened before, it is unclear why it is good for taxpayers to have some of their own discretionary spending taken away so other people can undertake a trip. It isn’t good for the environment.
After all, if you are going to spend other people’s money you better be sure you can spend it better than they can, more often than not this isn’t true.
Liberty, I read your posts with interest as while I don’t always agree, you do often make good and thought-provoking points.
Anyway, I’m wondering what your take is on the US Interstate system and the slow demise of rail there, particularly as one was almost entirely taxpayer underwritten and one was driven (with some early government subsidies) by private industry.
I’m sure NATA isn’t perfect, but it seems a damn site better than our current obsession with time-savings benefits. The problem with time-savings benefits is also that as travel speeds get faster, people don’t usually take quicker trips, they just travel further within the same period of time.
While that’s obviously still a benefit, it’s not a time-savings benefit and therefore should be measured differently. Like focusing on “how this project enhances accessibility”.