Auckland Council will meet this week to discuss the proposed introduction of congestion charges for parts of the city's roading network. Photo: RNZ / Lucy Xia
A proposal to introduce congestion charges for some of Auckland's busiest roads is a "simple solution" that has been well-tried around the world, says Auckland mayor Wayne Brown.
Auckland Council will meet on Thursday to discuss the introduction of the so-called 'Time of Use Charge', which would see people having to pay to use specific roads during peak-time travel.
Mayor Wayne Brown told Morning Report Auckland could not afford another motorway and the congestion plan was intended to discourage people from using certain roads at certain times.
"The problem is that every day, [at] morning rush and in the afternoon rush, State Highway 1 blocks between Penrose and Greenlane and State Highway 16 blocks between Lincoln Road and Te Atatu Road," he said.
"If we put on a charge - some people will drop off and then traffic will flow quicker without building any extra roads."
The proposed congestion charge had not been set but he imagined it would cost about the same as a cup of tea or coffee - around $3.50 - $5.
"It's a simple solution, well-tried around the world, nothing particularly new about it."
The charge would also be avoidable if people chose to travel outside of peak times, he said.
"It's just an encouragement to behave a bit differently so that you free up the traffic without having to build an expensive motorway or a tunnel."
Auckland Council services and performance group manager Tracey Berkahn told Morning Report time-of-use congestion charges meant road users could be charged if they travelled on particular parts of the network at specific times of the day.
"It's designed to make you choose perhaps to travel at a different time or to use a different way of getting past those heavily-congested parts of the network."
It was not possible for the city to build its way out of congestion, she said.
"If you build a new road, it just gets congested all over again. If you give people more, more space, they'll just fill it up, so we need to have a different way to sort of manage that demand."
Berkahn said equity measures to ensure people were being charged fairly under the proposed charges still needed "quite a lot of work".
"There may be, for example, a daily cap where you might pass that point four, five times a day, but you might only be charged for the first two times, so once in and once out."
But Brown, in response to a question about whether locals who used the affected roads more frequently would potentially have to pay more, said: "This equity stuff's bollocks."
"Is it unfair on everybody else that has paid for that road and doesn't use it?"
He suggested people who wanted to avoid the charges could start work earlier and children should be encouraged to use public transport alternatives to get to school.
"You can get to school on a bus, you can get to school on a bicycle; young children have still got legs, actually - you know, walk to school."
'You can't fix Auckland by doing nothing'
The technology to enable the proposed congestion charges was already being used as part of tolling and parking solutions in Auckland and would not be difficult to implement, Berkahn said.
"It's not new technology and there are a number of systems that are out there that you can buy off the shelf, so the technology part of it's not a hard or long process."
In a statement, Northern Infrastructure Forum (NIF) chair Simon Bridges said the council's plans dovetailed nicely with the likely central government work programme.
"The enabling legislation for congestion pricing has been drafted and, with consensus support for congestion pricing across the main parties, the expectation is that it will be picked up by the incoming government early in this term," he said.
"There's a real sense that, at last, the stars are aligning for congestion pricing."
He said no single initiative could do more to put a dent in Auckland's rampant congestion than congestion pricing.
"If we're going to keep up with population growth and rising travel demand, as well as unlocking productivity in this city, we can't keep reaching for the same tools.
"We need to be open to new solutions, and we need to be bold."
Brown said he was keen to get moving on the proposal but he anticipated it would be held up by bureaucratic wrangling.
"The biggest risk will be a whole bunch of bureaucrats and the Ministry of Transport and Auckland Transport making it complicated, when it's not complicated."
Asked whether consultation would be required to find out whether Aucklanders were in support of the proposal, Brown said he was impatient to get moving on the plan and those who had voted for him expected him to do things to fix Auckland.
"This is one of the planks that I stood in [sic] when I ... went to be the mayor."
Consulting people ahead of doing something was "a waste of time", he said, citing the implementation of dynamic lanes to address traffic flow issues at Whangaparāoa in the north of the city.
"When they went to put it in, everybody complained bitterly - now they love it," he said.
"You can't fix Auckland by doing nothing, by doing nothing we got what we've got."
