A few surprises here, namely that PHEVs will pay a lower rate of RUCs, I was under the impression there would be a rebate scheme for petrol purchased.
No revisions to the weight brackets, which I imagine will be necessary before all vehicles eventually go to RUCs.
If they wanted to get really ‘equitable’ on road users paying the cost of the roads they use they could commit to tolling the white elephant motorways they’re planning on building.
Given petrol tax and RUC are user pays, as in the more you use roads the more you pay, what would the benefit of toll roads be?
Most motorways are actually cost positive as far as maintenance is concerned, due to the relatively low maintenance cost relative to the amount of traffic they serve.
Out of curiosity, which projects do you think will be “white elephants”?
All of them. They will increase sprawl, increase emissions and make congestion worse in cities.
I don’t think you understand what a “white elephant” typically means.
I think I do, spending tens of billions of dollars on motorways to make traffic worse and increase transport emissions when they need to be reducing is a bad deal. It also starved the rest of the road network of maintenance funds the last time they did this.
A “white elephant” is something that isn’t being used, or is too expensive to maintain.
You can always tell the office workers on here, they have no concept of the idea some people need a vehicle to do their job.
Wow, trying to take it personal huh. People who need a vehicle for work would benefit from people who have other options besides driving through fewer vehicles on the road. I have told you this before, but you seem to be trying to claim I’m advocating people not to have vehicles fullstop.
See, you can repeat the same line as much as you want, but it just doesn’t work like that.
The Kapiti coast, for example, has great public transport, especially in and out of Wellington, and traffic was still a nightmare until transmission gully opened.
The Hutt Valley is the same, great public transport available, and yet the motorway still chokes up at rush hour.
Reality just doesn’t align with your trite catchphrases, unfortunately.
I love the PT Wellington does have, and am glad it’s there but calling it great and implying its all fine and not in need of a significant upgrade is imo an enormous stretch.
There are very regular bus replacements at the moment, they shut down when the tracks heat up, the jville line is massively speed limited, services are infrequent out of commuting times and the whole system is geared to getting people into town. It’s not a service many people can rely on for most of their trips and it forces people to drive and create the traffic you complain about. And that’s not even getting into the buses.