Govt accused of 'politburo approach' to road planning

The government is being accused of taking a politburo approach to road planning after announcing changes designed to cut through "complicated and confusing" processes.

Transport Minister Steven Joyce said yesterday he would bring a bill to parliament that would amend the Land Transport Management Act because some of its provisions were holding up progress.

Changes in the bill will include:

• Almost halving the number of transport committee members around the country from 228 to 118;
• Halving the number of formal transport plans or strategies required around the country from 35 to 18;
• Removing barriers to the use of the tolling and public private partnership (PPP) provisions in the Act.

"Current legislation is far too complicated -- it has resulted in confusing and convoluted decision making, ambiguity between planning documents and onerous consultation processes," Mr Joyce said.

Key changes include cutting the number of transport committee members around the country from 228 to 118 and halving the number of formal transport plans or strategies from 35 to 18, with simplified criteria to assess projects.

Labour's transport spokesman Shane Jones told NZPA that without effective local participation, local roads would be the casualties.

"We see a pattern here, with Steven Joyce taking a politburo approach and centralising far too much," he said.

"The ongoing focus on more and more motorway tarmac is stripping money away from local roads which is where a lot of our economic produce originates -- the milk, the meat, the fish and the logs."

The Green Party said decisions would be taken away from communities and given to "faceless motorway building officials".

Transport spokesman Gareth Hughes said the Government wanted to exclude regional land transport committees and ignore environmental sustainability.

"It's crazy to think we could get a thriving economy, with livable towns and cities, from traffic engineers who don't understand the impact of their projects on urban development," he said.

The Council for Infrastructure welcomed the announcement but said the reforms failed to address long-term funding constraints.

"The concerning aspect of this proposed legislation is that it fails to provide new and expanded ways to generate revenue to fund the significant investment in transport infrastructure that is required," said the council's chief executive Stephen Selwood.

Mr Joyce's changes include removing barriers to the use of tolling, but Mr Selwood said tolls on existing roads were prohibited and the reforms failed to address that issue.

"Inevitably, this means that tolling will only be able to fund new roads...and potentially very expensive tolls on a new Auckland Harbour crossing," he said.

"Refusal to allow tolls on existing roads is neither effective, efficient nor safe."