Revamped transport bill submission okayed by council

A revamped submission on the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill has today been endorsed by Environment Waikato’s council.

The submission was amended after the last Regional Land Transport committee meeting on December 3, when it was decided that Cr Norm Barker (the chair of the Regional Land Transport Committee) and Hamilton’s mayor Bob Simcock should strengthen its comments around flexibility.

Recent speculation in the media around the potential for a regional fuel tax was quickly dealt with by Cr Barker.

Neither Environment Waikato – or its local council partners on the Regional Land Transport Committee (RLTC) – have any plans to introduce such a tax.

“We are not planning for a regional fuel tax,” said Cr Barker, of Environment Waikato.

“But we want the legislation written in such a way that if a future RLTC ever wanted to review this then the rules would work in the Waikato’s best interests.

“For the Waikato region for example, were a fuel tax to be contemplated, it is likely that it would be considered to advance the RLTC’s top priority land transport project, the Waikato Expressway,” the revised submission said.

“So rather than us pushing for a tax, as has been suggested, our submission is simply trying to ensure that the proposed law is more favourable to us in the event that the community signalled it was prepared to pay such a tax,” Cr Barker said.

The new RLTC submission said the committee would want more flexibility to use the money for roading than was currently proposed.

Therefore the submission formally opposed the 5c a litre spending cap for capital roading projects, and also argued a tax should be able to be levied for packages of projects across the region.

Councillors endorsed the Regional Land Transport Committee’s submission noting that it was the district council roading authorities across the region who were primarily responsible for the roading network along with Transit New Zealand. All district councils are members of the Regional Land Transport Committee.