National Land Transport Programme 1994/1995 (In Transit No.56 September 1994

In Transit No 56 September 1994

Summary National Land Transport Programme 1994/1995

In Transit No.56 September 1994

In Transit No.56 September 1994

This edition of In Transit almost exclusively focuses on the National Land Transport Programme, which was at the time approved by the Minister of Transport following commitments from the Minister of Finance. This was an era with a strong focus on economic efficiency and improving the quality of spending on the road network, so funding for new works was tight (8.2% of total spending, with another 15.5% on committed capital works). 

Key highlights were:

• A focus on safety, cost effective maintenance, refinement of project evaluation (to ensure a rational analysis of social, environmental and economic benefits, ensuring competitive pricing procedures generate efficiency gains, and maximise the return from assets under Transit NZ control (the state highway network). 
• Funding increased to enable Transit NZ to continue to fund projects down to a Benefit/Cost Ratio of 5.0 (which was the threshold for the previous year). This is less than Transit NZ requested (it sought $675.8m to lower the threshold to between 4 and 5, but received $655.81m, up from $635.81 the previous year). 
• New works funding excluding State Highway property was $55.9m, on top of existing commitments of $105m.
• Funding approved for local roading was marginally higher than requested, as was funding for state highway safety projects, but funding for state highways was lower than requested, almost entirely for new construction and property purchases.
• Funding for public transport was the same as requested, but split between passenger services (operational subsidies) and a small allocation for new works.
• Transit NZ confirmed its commitment to sealing all state highways by 2002 (as previously noted this has not been achieved in 2023), with priority given to SH12 Waipoua Forest, SH25 Coromandel and SH6 Haast Pass.

Outside the NLTP process this newsletter reports that Transit NZ provisionally approved funding for extending Auckland's suburban rail network to a new station at Britomart, of $5.8m. At the time the project had an estimated cost of $17m. It was noted that a decision had to be made when the lease on Auckland Railway Station was to run out at the end of 1994.