Keep New Zealand Moving

New Zealanders pay at the pump, through road-user charges, rates and tolls. They should see that money in reliable roads and shorter journeys. Instead, potholes go unfixed, new housing arrives before the roads needed to support it, and projects become slower and more expensive than they need to be.

ACT will put the basics first. We will build ahead of growth, maintain the network we already have, and stop transport money being diverted into vanity projects or procurement based on ethnicity. We will also stop unnecessary rules pricing families out of reliable vehicles.

New Zealand cannot unlock its potential while people and freight are stuck in traffic. ACT will build more, waste less and make every transport dollar deliver.

Read ACT’s full policy, Keep New Zealand Moving, here.

ACT will:

• Require major projects to publish the lowest-cost safe option alongside the preferred option, including the cost, delivery time and benefit-cost ratio of each.

• Build roads ahead of growth. On major two-lane growth corridors, 10,000 vehicles a day will trigger route protection, 15,000 will trigger consenting, design and a funded capacity plan, and 20,000 will trigger construction of additional lanes where growth continues.

• Require councils to repair potholes, drainage, and bridges before funding street redesigns, by protecting maintenance and renewal funding in the National Land Transport Fund so it cannot be raided for other projects.

• Make equal treatment a condition of Crown infrastructure funding. Ethnicity will not determine who can bid, how bids are scored, who receives preference or who must be subcontracted.

• Stop the National Land Transport Fund paying for non-functional art, monuments and decorative extras. Motorists’ money should build and maintain the transport network.

• Scrap unrealistic vehicle-emissions settings, oppose arbitrary age bans and require new rules to disclose their effect on vehicle supply and prices.

In our team's words:

ACT Infrastructure spokesperson Simon Court says:

"New Zealand does not need to accept deteriorating roads, unaffordable projects and congestion as the price of growth.

"The payoff for drivers and the public is more value from their every dollar with standard, proven designs and transparent published projects with their timelines.

"ACT will build more, waste less and make every transport dollar deliver, so New Zealand keeps moving."