12. Dr CAM CALDER (National) Link to this
to the Minister of Transport
What further progress is being made on developing the commuter rail network in Auckland?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) Link to this
There is more good news. I am looking forward to tomorrow, when I will help to officially open the newly constructed New Lynn transport hub. This $275 million project has separated road and rail, by placing the rail tracks in a trench; it has double-tracked the railway line; and it is being serviced by a new station that is part of an integrated transport hub for bus and rail. This will provide easy access to public transport for New Lynn locals, and it will significantly improve traffic flow through the area. The wider development is expected to create 4,000 new residents and provide 12,000 new jobs.
Hon David Cunliffe Link to this
I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I acknowledge that the question has been accepted on notice, but I question whether the Minister does in fact have responsibility for the matters raised in the question, as he has made no significant decisions around the New Lynn transit—
Mr SPEAKERI do not know what the Hon David Cunliffe is attempting to achieve with silly points of order. The only way to describe that is as a silly point of order. The member may think that it is clever, but I do not. I do not think that members of the public who are listening will think that it is clever, either.
How does the development at New Lynn fit into the Government’s wider $1.6 billion investment in Auckland rail?
This National-led Government has funded improvements to all transport modes in Auckland—for example, the Victoria Park tunnel, the north-western cycleway, and, of course, our enormous commitment to rail with the electrification of the lines, new electric passenger trains, and ongoing work to upgrade the infrastructure. This Government has spent $180 million on improvements to Auckland’s commuter rail, with another $1 billion worth of commitments to come, and all of it without charging a 10c a litre regional fuel tax, which, of course, the previous Labour Government was planning to do.
Carol BeaumontWhen the Minister warned the House yesterday that further work must be done to ensure that the new rail network is financially sustainable, did he mean that further fare increases can be expected, or that the central business district rail loop is now off the agenda?
Firstly, the central business district rail loop has not been committed to by anybody in terms of funding—not by either the previous Government or the current one, nor by any of the local bodies in Auckland that have talked about it on a regular basis. So it cannot be off the agenda if it has not yet been on it. In regard to the cost of actually running the rail network, there are some issues in terms of making sure that we can cover the operating costs of the expanded network for Auckland before we go further. There are three ways in which that can be met: increased subsidies from the Auckland local bodies, from the New Zealand Transport Agency, and from fares. We do not want to see in Auckland the situation that has occurred over many years in Wellington, where insufficient investment in maintenance and renewal has resulted in a very, very poor network. That situation was not fixed by the previous Government.