The Green Party wants to make public transport free for under-18s, ban petrol car imports from 2030, and create a $1.5 billion “Cycle Super Highway” fund to build five-metre-wide cycleways.
A bolstered rail system with trains travelling more than 100kmh between major towns, and inter-city light rail in both Auckland and Wellington feature in the party’s transport plan, announced by Greens co-leader James Shaw in Auckland, in Tuesday.
Shaw said decades of underinvestment in public transport had led New Zealand to rely on cars, worsening the climate crisis.
“We have a once-in-a generation opportunity to rebuild our communities in a way which tackles the climate crisis and makes our communities healthier in the long term.”
The party wants to reallocate funding currently headed to motorway builds to fund their transport policy, taking $1.58b from the national transport fund and $1.7b from the Government’s NZ Upgrade programme.
Another $13.6b would then need to be spent in the next 10 years to fund the proposed projects.
“We will connect our major cities through a major new investment in intercity passenger rail … Rail will carry thousands of people a day from Auckland to Hamilton, from Wellington to Masterton and Palmerston North, and from Christchurch to Rangiora and Ashburton, eventually including Dunedin and Timaru,” Shaw said.
“This new intercity rail network will slash the emissions caused by the status quo of only being able to commute by car, as well as create thousands of jobs building the network.”
The party also wants to fund a new “Go Anywhere” transport card, essentially the equivalent of Auckland’s AT Hop card or Wellington’s Snapper card, that would work across all transport, anywhere in the country.
As well as making transport free for under 18-year-olds, people over 65, and community service card holders, transport costs will be cut in half for students.
For those paying for transport, there would be a maximum spend each week. Meaning once a person spends that amount on transport, the remainder of their public transport use if free that week.
Under the policy, a contestable $1.5b fund for Cycling Super Highways would be created. It would be spent on cycleways between two and five metres wide, provided the cycleway was continuous, linked multiple outer suburbs with a city, was fully protected from car traffic, and could be started within three years and completed within two.
The Green Party wants to copy the United Kingdom in setting a deadline for the importation of petrol vehicles. In the UK, only zero-emission light vehicles, being cars, vans and utes, will be imported into the country beyond 2030.
Until then, a clean car standard would be set to require imported cars to be move fuel efficient, year-on-year, encouraging companies to import more hybrid and electric vehicles.
The party’s proposed rail roll out has been set in two stages. The first, until 2027, would have electrified rail services connecting regional towns with Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, get services running at least every two hours at speeds of up to 110kmh.
A night train between Auckland and Wellington would run once daily.
The second stage, ending in 2035, would have these trains running at speeds up to 160kmh, and towns such as Napier, Dunedin, Whangārei, and Whanganui connected to the electrified, twice-daily rail lines.
In Auckland, a 40-minute light rail journey between the airport and centre city that could carry 21,600 people each hour has been proposed.
In Wellington, light rail between the railway station and Newtown, then extended to the airport, has been included in the plan alongside a second tunnel through Mt Victoria – not for cars, but for walkers and cyclists.
Extracted in full from: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/122922549/election-2020-greens-promise-free-public-transport-ban-on-petrol-vehicle-imports-cycle-super-highway-fund
