9 September 2013

Auckland Transport Annual Report shows no CRL this decade

“The Auckland Transport Annual Report released today contains some very concerning numbers on rail patronage which fall far short of the numbers needed to get the Mayor’s City Rail Link project underway,” said Auckland Mayoral candidate John Palino.

“As announced a couple of months ago by the Prime Minister, in order to get central government support for his pet project, the Mayor needs to get rail patronage heading towards 20 million passengers well before 2020.

“Not only are rail numbers nowhere near this figure, they are down on last year and off an incredible 25 per cent from this year’s target.

“At just ten million boardings over past year, rail patronage needs to grow at around 2 million boardings per annum to get the Government’s funding committed on the earlier timeframe. But almost a million less people used rail this year than the year before.

“At this rate, not only will the Mayor not realise his election promise to deliver the CRL, he will have stranded an enormous amount of public capital in land banking and other costs on a project which is not going to be viable until closer to 2030.

“To get the CRL moving quicker, the Mayor should have been making it easier to get on trains in the suburbs with better park and ride facilities.

“Instead, this money is being spent on a bloated bureaucracy. Full time equivalent employees increased a nearly unbelievable 13 per cent on last year.

“That’s money that could have been spent ensuring the integrated ticketing system encouraged commuters to use public transport instead of punishing them when they didn’t use it the way the Mayor wanted them to.

“A better spread of short and long term investment, coupled with a much more efficient bureaucracy and better customer service is needed to attract people onto public transport. But after three years in office, Mayor Brown has shown there will have to be change at the top in order for this to happen,” said Palino.

ENDS

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