Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is rejecting opposition party efforts to get major expressway plans up and running.
National MPs are launching petitions for ten “roads of national significance” worth around $10.5 billion which are “at risk of not going ahead” under current leadership.
However, Ardern told Newstalk ZB that “neglected regional roads” needed more attention instead.
She says the petitions are for roads that were only “proposals” put forward by National ahead of the election.
“We’d be much better off investing in some of those neglected regional roads, and in urban areas some alternatives to roading as well.
“If you ask a local mayor, they will say, ‘Can you please help us with our regional roads, particularly some of the safety issues we have?’,” Ardern told Newstalk ZB.
Meanwhile, National’s transport spokesperson Judith Collins is also accusing transport minister Phil Twyford of planning to divert road taxes into rail projects.
“This is an important principle, adhered to by successive governments, ensuring the specific taxes paid by motorists are invested in newer, safer and better roads … Road users pay taxes which are directly returned to them.
“But this now appears under threat, because of the Labour Party’s obsession with light rail in Auckland,” Collins says.
National’s petitions are for the following roads:
• The upgrade of the Redoubt-Mill Road corridor from Manukau and Flat Bush to Papakura and Drury
• The extension of the Waikato Expressway from Cambridge to the Kaimai Range, and from Cambridge to Tirau
• The four lane extension of the Northern Motorway from Warkworth to Whangarei.
• An East-West Link Road project between the Onehunga-Penrose industrial area and State Highways 1 and 20
• The Tauranga to Katikati Road project as a continuous four lane State Highway with wide lanes and safety measures
• The four laning of the Napier to Hastings Expressway
• The Otaki to north of Levin expressway road project
• The Christchurch Northern Motorway between Belfast and Pegasus
• The construction of the four-lane State Highway 1 link between Christchurch and Ashburton
