My Account
Earthworks continue at the southern end of the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway. Will there be a second toll in addition to the one required to pass through the Johnstones Hill Tunnels?
The Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) last month submitted a proposal to the Minister of Transport on the potential tolling of the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway.
An NZTA spokesperson said the proposal provides all the information that Minister Michael Wood will need to make an informed decision on tolling, but does not advocate a position on tolling from NZTA itself.
This is despite the fact that an NZTA tolling team assessment last year found the motorway was suitable for tolling and advocated that the NZTA board recommend to the Minister that the road be tolled.
Meanwhile, NZTA has responded to Mahurangi Matters enquiries about why the Puhoi to Warkworth is being considered for tolling when other recent major road projects in New Zealand have escaped a toll.
Mahurangi Matters’s readers had particularly noted the decision not to toll Transmission Gully (a 27km, four-lane motorway, north of Wellington, currently under construction) and the Waterview Tunnel in west Auckland.
The spokesperson said Transmission Gully was assessed for tolling by NZTA in 2018, but concluded the potential revenue benefits were unlikely to make a meaningful contribution to the cost of the road.
NZTA said its investigations also showed that implementing a toll would likely result in a high diversion rate on to an alternative coastal route (the current SH1), reducing the environmental, safety and access benefits of communities along that coastal route.
NZTA also looked at the question of whether Transmission Gully should be tolled primarily as a mechanism for managing demand, rather than a means of meeting the cost of the road.
The spokesperson said while tolling in the future might be a valuable tool for reducing congestion, other work needed to occur first to ensure public transport could offer a competitive alternative to personal vehicles.
In 2015, an investigation into tolling the Western Ring Route, of which the Waterview Tunnel is a part, also concluded that tolling was not a viable option.
The Waterview Connection business case concluded that introducing a toll would create a significant level of traffic diversion back on to local roads, especially at off-peak times.
NZTA’s tolling team reached different conclusions for the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway, finding that a toll would make a meaningful contribution to the cost of the project and would not result in traffic volume changes that would unduly impact the wider road network.
But Mahurangi-based Labour-list MP Marja Lubeck wrote to Michael Wood late last month, reiterating her own and the Mahurangi community’s opposition to tolling.
Ms Lubeck said Mahurangi residents would be faced with paying a toll for the Warkworth-Puhoi section of road and then be tolled again as they exit through the Johnstones Hill Tunnels to travel to the Auckland CBD.
“The community sees this as inherently unfair, given there are only three toll roads in New Zealand across all of the motorway network, and this would be the only place where two tolls would be in place across what is essentially one road,” she wrote.
Ms Lubeck added that on top of this, residents were also saddled with a 10c/litre Auckland Transport levy and a $150 per property transport targeted rate.
Ms Lubeck wrote that in her view the toll proposal put an unreasonably heavy burden on the people of Rodney.
Should the Minister still decide in favour of tolling, he will then put the question to Cabinet to make a final decision.
