Good evening. 

Let me start by thanking the Campaign for Better Transport for hosting this wonderful event.

In a sense, New Zealand is the world’s oldest proper democracy, having been the first to let all adults vote.

And so forums like this, where we can have an honest and civilised exchange of ideas, are one of the things that make me proud to be a New Zealander.

I’ve been asked to address the question of how the ACT Party would use its influence in Parliament to direct central government transport funding over the next three years.

It’s tempting to stand up and say that, of course, ACT believes in a high quality integrated public transport network.  No doubt that’s what other candidates will promise.  It’s also tempting to stand up and endorse what might be called “sexy” transport projects such as the central city rail loop, or the Albany to the airport rail line, regardless of cost.

However, Aucklanders are rightly frustrated with transport, and have been for a long time.  A year or two back, the Employers and Manufacturers Association estimated that traffic congestion in Auckland was costing us in excess of a billion dollars a year.

It’s no mean feat to create a system of transport that gets people where they’d like to be, at the time they’d like to be there, at minimum cost as fast as possible.

My message tonight is that we can achieve those things, but simply making better decisions under the system we currently have will not do it.  Instead, we must fundamentally reconsider the way that we collect revenue and make payment for transport.

The ACT Party’s most important principle on transport policy is that the people getting the benefit from transport should, as far as possible, pay the costs. 

Too much of our current controversy about transport is caused by confusion over what government should subsidise, and whether subsidies are fair and efficient.

Most of the debate tonight will be about whether government should subsidise this project or that, one mode of transport or another.

The truth is that people in their everyday lives could send very strong signals about what kind of transport they want simply by deciding how they’d like to spend their money.

At the present time, we have public transport that is heavily subsidised.  If it’s true, and it often is true, that larger shared vehicles such as buses, trams, ferries and trains are more efficient than private cars, then we might expect public transport to be cheaper even without subsidies.

They are not, because at the same time as government is subsidising public transport, it is giving fuzzy signals by subsidising private transport through taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded roads.

You might be a conscientious user of public transport, or an active commuter who uses only walking and cycling.  Under our current system, you receive subsidies on your use of public transport even as you pay rates and taxes to subsidise those who drive private cars.  This approach is unfair.

Not only is it unfair but it’s inefficient.  Our roads are funded by a mix of rates, taxes, and petrol excise taxes. 

Consider for a moment what would happen if our airline industry was funded in the same way.

You would be saying that anyone who pays a lump sum once a year (akin to your rates bill) and buys a certain amount of jet fuel (akin to petrol excise tax) is entitled to show up and get on a plane whenever they want.  The result would be queues and chaos.  That’s exactly what happens on the roads of this great city every morning and every evening.

There is an alternative, and it’s starting to be used around the world.  It’s a close analogy to what airlines actually do, charging different amounts to fly at different times of the year and different times of the day.

Take the example of Stockholm.

In 2006, the Swedish capital introduced time-sensitive pricing for entrance to the central city.  Such experiments have been slated as politically unpopular, and politicians who advocate them as out of touch with political reality.   But after an initial trial period, Stockholmers voted by referendum to retain their system.

No doubt they were persuaded by the positive results, which have been confirmed by multiple studies.

Congestion was reduced, with queuing, sitting in traffic getting frustrated, being reduced by 30 to 50 percent.

Total vehicle emissions within the central city were reduced by 14 percent, while noise was also reduced.

Accidents were reduced by between five and ten percent.

There was no noticeable reduction in commercial activity or property values.

Two things did increase, however.

One was patronage on public transport, which increased by between five and ten percent, according to different studies of the trial.

The other increase was in the percentage of traffic made up by “high value vehicles”, light trucks and even more so heavy trucks.  In other words, proper pricing meant that the roads were used more by vehicles carrying important goods, something good for the entire economy.

The Stockholm experience shows that properly pricing road use can work and can be politically popular.  It can improve the use of roads by applying the discipline of pricing to one of our most important infrastructural assets.

Proper pricing of roads has long been the holy grail of transport engineering.  For a long time, the cost of actually collecting payments has prevented it from being reached, but electronic technology is breaking down that barrier.

When London set about congestion charging they found that the cost of collecting fees was half the value of the fees collected.  Stockholm has reduced that cost to 28 percent.  As road pricing technology develops, we should expect collection costs to continue reducing.

The German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said that those who like public policy and sausages should not watch either being made.  What we aspire to is a world where vexing debates over road versus rail, versus ferries, versus buses are no longer necessary.  Instead of paying their money to governments and getting back whatever the political process throws up, transport projects would by and large be self-funding, responding to the real demand of travellers.

If you are a train junkie, that’s fine.  If you’re a petrol-head who wants to drive their own vehicle, that’s ok.  If you prefer buses, that’s ok too.  And let’s not forget the contribution that ferries can make to our water-bound city.

Rather than endorse any particular transport mode or transport project for Auckland, the ACT Party will push for the principle that those who get the benefit of a particular transport mode should pay the costs.

It is true that, as a potential coalition partner in any future government, ACT will not get its own way entirely.  The most that a coalition partner such as ACT can promise to do is influence the flavour of a coalition government. 

What I hope I’ve done tonight is give you an idea of what that flavour would be.  We wish to push the next government to use the best technology to ensure that transport is priced correctly.  We believe it is wrong and inefficient to charge people based on rates, taxes, and petrol excise taxes then subsidise transport projects according to whatever is politically popular.

Thank you again to the Campaign for Better Transport and everyone here today.  If you are truly committed to better transport, then I hope you will give your party vote to ACT on November 26.