GPS shows no new direction on transport

National’s draft Government Policy Statement on transport is strictly business as usual, Labour’s Transport spokesperson Phil Twyford says.

“This is more of the same we’ve had from National since 2009: more than a billion dollars a year on their mega-motorway projects, some of which are very poor value for money.

“There is no new commitment to improving public transport infrastructure in our largest cities. John Key’s road to Damascus conversion to Auckland’s City Rail Link last year increasingly looks like it was just a photo-op. There was nothing in the Budget for urban public transport, and now nothing new in the GPS.

“There is a lot of rhetoric about the need for more efficiency in moving freight around, but National has only one tool in the box – moving bigger trucks on bigger motorways.

“National should be taking a more intelligent look at how investing in rail, ports, coastal shipping and roads can boost economic development in the regions. The system should allow the most efficient transport mode to do the job on a case by case basis. That is what the next Labour-led Government will do.

“The draft policy acknowledges that traffic demand has been flat lining for several years now, but then in a giant leap of faith assumes that rapid growth in traffic demand will shortly resume, even though flat demand is a reality all over the world now. Pumping billions of dollars into low-value motorway projects in the hope that future traffic demand will justify them is a fool’s dream.

“Gerry Brownlee’s motorways obsession is stuck in the 1950s but New Zealand needs a 21st century transport policy,” Phil Twyford says.

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