28 February, 2002

New Sources Of Funding

Fact Sheet Four

To help fund land transport improvements, the government plans changes which will ensure finance is more readily available. Legislation changes are planned to allow public/private partnerships and to make it easier to use tolling for certain projects.

Tolls

Tolling could help advance some projects more quickly and free up public funds for other projects. Tolls could also be used to pay for additional benefits that communities or road users want from a project, over and above those funded by Transfund New Zealand. There are no plans to introduce tolls on existing roads.

At present, individual toll roads require legislation before they can be built. The government plans to introduce generic legislation to enable tolling, subject to government approval, rather than requiring stand-alone legislation for each tolling project.

The government will retain control over which tolling projects are approved. In making a decision on a particular tolling scheme, issues the government will consider include:

• the overall benefits of the project
• availability of alternative transport options and the impact of the project on such options
• the use to which toll revenues are being put and the transparency of this use
• the means of ensuring protection against over-charging
• views of road users including affected communities, public transport users, pedestrians and cyclists
• privacy safeguards.

The government will approve a project for tolling only if it helps achieve the objectives of the government's New Zealand Transport Strategy and is consistent with any relevant regional transport strategy.

Legislation is needed for these changes.

Public/private partnerships (PPPs)

Legislation is needed to enable public/private partnerships to be established. They could be agreed on a case-by-case basis, with conditions including:

• the partnership arrangement is of limited life
• the project assists in achieving the objectives of the government's transport strategy
• the assets are at all times operated under public supervision
• the project does not involve the transfer of ownership of the asset into majority private ownership
• all assets revert to full public ownership at the end of the partnership arrangement
• all powers to acquire land under the Public Works Act 1981 remain with the public sector
• the project has a high degree of support from affected communities.

Public/private partnerships could be used for both roading and other land transport infrastructure projects.