20 January 2020

The Transport Minister’s claim that light rail from Auckland’s CBD to the airport will 'absolutely' be finished by 2030 cannot be trusted, National’s Transport spokesperson Chris Bishop says.

“Phil Twyford’s political legacy is one of broken promises, so why should we expect this one to be any different.

“Auckland’s light rail has been a fail from the beginning. Labour promised during the election campaign to have it finished between the CBD and Mt Roskill by 2021, only to quickly abandon that target when it became clear Phil Twyford could not deliver on it.

“Speaking of abandoned targets, remember Labour’s promise to build 100,000 KiwiBuild houses in ten years? Yeah, that was Phil Twyford as well, and that target didn’t last very long either, nor did he in the Housing portfolio.

“The reality is, Phil Twyford’s incompetent oversight is the reason this project is a least a decade away.

“His bizarre decision to entertain a bidding war between his own Transport Agency and NZ Infra has set the project back years, and set progress on Auckland’s transport woes back even further because critical roading projects have been put on ice in the interim.

“After more than two years in Government, there is no exact route, no delivery model, no design work done, no costings, no consents, no designations, no business case – nothing.

“Light rail has become KiwiBuild 2.0 – just another of Labour’s broken promises.”

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