National's new roads will encourage more cars, traffic experts warn
Transport experts dispute the National Partys claim its road-building plans will cut congestion. National unveiled a policy on Monday to spend $16.8 billion on 12 four-lane motorways and bypasses, $600m on a new highway, $5.6b on public transport and $313 million on road resilience. Unveiling the policy, party leader Christopher Luxon said New Zealanders will be able to get where they want to go faster and spend less time in their cars and more time doing what they love. But transport research suggests the opposite: that over the long-term, urban traffic will remain steady or even increase. Transport advocate Matt Lowrie says Aucklanders have already experienced this with the Waterview Tunnel, a six-lane bypass connecting south and central parts of the city that opened in 2017. It was fantastic, speeding up travel. Then five or 10 years later, travel is just as bad as it ever was if not worse. National transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said the infrastructure would create a more resilient, better connected and safer transport system. When the Southern Motorway has an accident or is blocked for various reasons which weve had a couple of times this year people have got no other way to get in and out of Auckland. Lowrie said infrastructure projects from all around the world established that increasing the capacity of roads increases the number of people driving, particularly in cities. The new road might ease traffic for the first few years, Lowrie said. Then people start to adjust their travel behaviour: a person whod use public transport or a bike might hop in their car after the new road is built, while another will take multiple single journeys where they had previously combined errands, he added. Traffic has an equilibrium to it. If its above a certain level, people put off travel or change their travel and if its below a certain level, theyll travel more and fill up the space thats available, effectively, Lowrie said. More drivers increased the chance of an accident or breakdown, he added. You end up with more travel overall than you would have had from natural growth. Brown said the four public transport projects two busways in Auckland plus another bus-or-rail line, plus rail upgrades in Wellington would offer travellers an alternative option to driving. If elected, the party would also introduce congestion charging, to replace the regional fuel tax currently adding 11.5c a litre to petrol, in the City of Sails. Motorists would pay a congestion fee at peak times, Brown said, to manage demand. An OECD transport publication said behaviour change explains why, despite the rapid expansion of road infrastructure, the average time spent in traffic has steadily increased. The Ministry of Transports chief science advisor Simon Kingham concurred : Building new highways generally encourages more car travel. Brown said he understood the theory but thought the public transport investments and peak-time congestion charging would balance the impact. Lowrie said new city motorways create air pollution and climate issues, while failing to solve the traffic problem. They involve a lot of emissions, from all the earthworks and concrete , he added. If you take out traffic capacity, you get a reduction in travel and emissions. Brown said that all large infrastructure projects whether a motorway or a public transport network produced construction emissions. The National policy document said: Over the coming decades, what we drive might change as more New Zealanders make the switch to electric vehicles, but we will still need modern, fast, high-quality roads to drive on. Brown said the type of vehicle would change dramatically over the next 20 years. Over a lifetime, electric vehicles produce half the emissions of a petrol car. The remainder comes from manufacturing the cars body and battery, shipping and waste disposal emissions. Under 2% of all vehicles on the road are electric. According to Climate Change Commission projections in 2021 , the majority of cars will be fossil-fuelled out to 2035. Climate researcher Paul Winton had studied whether Auckland could meet its carbon-cutting goal to slash transport emissions by 64% by 2030 solely through switching to electric cars. Its impractical, he said. Youre changing out two-thirds of the vehicle fleet in seven years. Its too many vehicles. The numbers associated with that are absolutely massive, Winton added. Asked if Nationals opposition to the Clean Car Discount which lowers the cost of low-emitting cars and increases the price of higher-polluting vehicles could slow the national uptake of EVs, Brown disagreed. We do support a Clean Car Standard, which is a fuel economy standard. Importers of vehicles do need to import cleaner vehicles over time... Were going to make sure its fair and able to be met. Through his modelling work, Winton concluded that Aucklands climate goals could only be met through projects to massively scale up active walking, cycling and buses. Building roads now is the exact wrong thing to do. He said Nationals highway-construction plans were akin to putting out fire with gasoline. Lowrie was concerned that the biggest public transport project on Nationals list, a $2.2b rail or busway in northwest Auckland, would be funded using private money. Theres a greater chance it wont happen, because it requires legislation changes... In my view, it should be funded in exactly the same way as state highways are funded, which is 100% by the Government. Our weekly email newsletter, by the Forever Project's Olivia Wannan, rounds up the latest climate events. Sign up here .