driving with blinkers

In today's Herald, Brian Rudman likens Steve Maharey - and the government - to George W Bush:

Auckland is fast becoming Wellington's Iraq. If we're not stoning Sports Minister Trevor Mallard for his waterfront stadium plan, we're up in arms about Government plans to make us pay tolls to finance highways that the rest of the country gets for free.

Ouch. For one, I'm not not resorting to violence over the waterfront option, and the government isn't yet making anyone pay tolls.

He goes on to claim that:

It's hard, though, to go past the fact that Auckland has long been cheated of its share of transport cash.The proportion has improved in recent years, but in the 2005 financial year, the Auckland region scored only 29 per cent of Land Transport New Zealand funding, although 34 per cent of New Zealanders live in the region.
Why should we have to pay more?

Which isn't really true. Auckland's transport spent was woeful in the 1990's, but so was everyone else's. But we haven't been cheated of dosh from the public kitty. Brian's statistical claims have several problems.

Firstly, Land Transport New Zealand are the people who do the road safety commercials, run our licensing and other peripheral matters. They have nothing to do with road funding.

Secondly, the statistics that Brian is referring to are these ones [PDF], which refer to total road funding, including Transit (the people who build and maintain roads) and Land Transport NZ.

They reveal that:

- Auckland has the highest spend per km of road ($1410 per km, versus 2nd place Wellington at $521 per km)
- Auckland has the 4th highest spend per capita, with the Waikato, Southland and Northland ahead.
- When excluding costs not allocated to any region, Auckland gets 33.6% of the funding versus 32% of population and a contribution of 31.6% to GDP.
- Including costs not allocated to any region(inc. paper pushing in Wellington, TV ads etc), Auckland has a 29% share of transport funding. The 2005 figures indicate that Auckalnd had a $245m spend on highways, and another $941m spend on highways that hadn't been allocated to any region. I suspect that a significant amount of that money went to Auckland and more still into work on SH1 in and out of Auckland.