They want to cap weekly fares at $20 in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and $10 everywhere else.
Under the plan, once you hit the cap, the rest of the trips you take that week could be free. Labour says it would save regular users about $25 a week. They reckon it would save you about $1200 a year.
The policy would begin from July next year, of course depending on whether they’re elected on November 7. They say it will cost $65 million a year, funded through the National Land Transport Fund.
Not all services will be included, though. Inter-regional trains like Te Huia and the Capital Connection miss out, along with some longer ferries like Waiheke and cash-only bus services.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins says the policy is aimed at easing cost-of-living pressures and transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere says too many families are being priced out of public transport.
What they didn’t really say is that it might also help reduce congestion on our roads. But, you know, it’s still a spending policy at a time when we’re trying to reduce spending and the national debt.
Now, the money will come from the transport fund, which National says is already oversubscribed, so presumably, to fund this, Labour will have to cut some of National’s road projects.
It is a cost-of-living policy and many people will welcome a $20-a-week commute. Their social media shows a lot of people saying this is good. But it will only appeal to those who aren’t already sorted.
If you’ve got a car - if you can afford a car, if you can afford car parking in urban areas - you won’t care about this; you might not like it.
But I’m surrounded in the newsroom by low-paid young people who cannot afford cars and certainly can’t afford parking, and they use public transport every day. So they’ll love it - but will young voters even bother to vote?
And meanwhile, that cost - $65 million - does it seem low to you? It seems low to me because there are already some caps in place.
And with the money coming from the National Land Transport Fund, the question is: which roading measures will be cut? Potholes, anybody?
Andrew Dickens is a broadcaster with Newstalk ZB. - where this article was sourced.
8 comments:
They would cut the $22b holiday highway that not even northland wants. That would free up $22b.
They could also revert National’s tax breaks for the property lobby. That’s another $2b.
They would also get more tax revenue and lower petrol risk with the public transport fare caps.
That would also undo ACT’s revocation of worker rights for professionals on higher salaries. This would be mean tax revenue from families who are then ready to put down roots in NZ.
Just for starters!
This is a terrible idea. I regularly use auckland trains to and from the city. Currently if you are seated next to annoying people who are yelling loudly or listening to their mobile phones without headphones, you have the option to get up and move to another carriage. Society has changed now. People have no manners, they don't shower every day necessarily or care if other passengers have to put up with their gangster rap music on full blast. If there is a $20 cap it will only encourage overcrowding and more anti social types to travel. Auckland transport already has a fare cap of $50 a week which seems quite fair.
oh, and we will need a website to explain it all plus a new IT system to manage the cap and a new Govt. agency to manage and maintain the system.
Does the cost seem low? I sent a Press Release out today to our Main Stream Media saying =
The Labour Party's announcement that its newly proposed $20 weekly public transport fare cap will cost $65 million is out by a factor of at least three times. The Opposition Leader's Transport Press Conference and Labour's webpage (https://www.labour.org.nz/farecap) state, "On average, people will save around $25 a week" from the cap, some more, some less, and "hundreds of thousands of people would benefit".
Census data from 2023 says 135,000 people use public buses, trains or ferries as their "main means of travel to work" (https://figure.nz/chart/x72mUPCCIJtePP5B). A weekly average saving of $25 per person for 52 weeks would cost the government $175 million. Should prices be slashed, demand for trips rises, increasing the subsidy to nearly $200 million. This estimate is conservative, since many people use public transport not associated with a commute to work.
Declaring that "hundreds of thousands of people" benefit and the saving is "on average $25 a week" does not add up to $65 million. It adds to at least three times that figure.
Isn't it good to know there are absolutely no issues confronting the country at present that Labour considers worthy of their attention except for the price of a bus ticket.
So tell me Mr Hipkins, how many new bureaucrats will be needed to operate this new system? Because somebody has to count the number of journeys each passenger makes every week to identify exactly which lucky commuter qualifies for the subsidy, and which day in the week they qualify. Somebody has to tell the driver who has to pay a fare and who can get on free. Somebody from the transport provider has to claim the subsidy from the NLTF to plug the hole in their operating cash-flow, week after week, month after month. Somebody at the NLTF has to administer the payment system and enforce compliance to prevent cheating.
I bet the cost of the extra bureaucrats has not been costed into your figure of $65 million Mr Hipkins. Nor the compliance cost for the transport providers to make the system work.
Or perhaps you plan to implement a brand new computer system to keep track of the daily movements of every passenger in the country in real time. You could throw in AI and facial recognition if you really wanted the geeks to start salivating. What could possibly go wrong? But I bet the development costs have not been included in the $65 million price tag either.
But maybe I'm overthinking the issue and it's going to be a high-trust process with minimal paper work - you know - like the wage subsidy during COVID. That really worked well didn't it?
So, right now, the cheap bus-ticket policy, like the Future Fund and CGT, is clearly just another example of Labour thinking out loud about what might be nice to have, without having any real comprehension of how to actually make it work. In other words, business as usual.
Isn't it good to know there are absolutely no issues confronting the country at present that Labour considers worthy of their attention except for the price of a bus ticket.
So tell me Mr Hipkins, how many new bureaucrats will be needed to operate this new system? Because somebody has to count the number of journeys each passenger makes every week to identify exactly which lucky commuter qualifies for the subsidy, and which day in the week they qualify. Somebody has to tell the driver who has to pay a fare and who can get on free. Somebody from the transport provider has to claim the subsidy from the NLTF to plug the hole in their operating cash-flow, week after week, month after month. Somebody at the NLTF has to administer the payment system and enforce compliance to prevent cheating.
I bet the cost of the extra bureaucrats has not been costed into your figure of $65 million Mr Hipkins. Nor the compliance cost for the transport providers to make the system work.
Or perhaps you plan to implement a brand new computer system to keep track of the daily movements of every passenger in the country in real time. You could throw in AI and facial recognition if you really wanted the geeks to start salivating. What could possibly go wrong? But I bet the development costs have not been included in the $65 million price tag either.
But maybe I'm overthinking the issue and it's going to be a high-trust process with minimal paper work - you know - like the wage subsidy during COVID. That really worked well didn't it?
So, right now, the cheap bus-ticket policy, like the Future Fund and CGT, is clearly just another example of Labour thinking out loud about what might be nice to have, without having any real comprehension of how to actually make it work. In other words, business as usual.
Robert, $22billion is a very high cost in anyone’s money.
I would have thought catching a school bus for over a decade would have been enough motivation for people to never want to use public transportation again in their adult life.
...well, it was for me...
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