Long time readers will know I have followed (and worked) on Auckland congestion pricing studies for some time. Most recently two big steps have been taken to advance the idea, noting it is labelled "Time of Use" road charging in New Zealand (just to add to the colourful vernacular in road pricing):
- New Zealand passed a law authorising the introduction of Time of Use road charging, enabling local authorities to develop proposals to work with central government;
- Auckland Transport commissioned study on more detailed options for Time of Use road charging
Incredibly, the Land Transport Management (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill was passed unanimously in the New Zealand Parliament, by all six parties.
Auckland Council has voted to proceed with consultation on three time-of-use road pricing (congestion pricing) options for Auckland City later this year.
There was extensive debate about whether to include in consultation an option of the public being able to reject road pricing altogether, but the amendment to do this did not proceed, so the consultation is not the end of the process. Curiously, long standing City Councillor, Maurice Williamson (who was a Minister of Transport in the 1990s and a long advocate of road pricing) wanted the option of the public to say "no" because he said he had a record of pushing through unpopular policies before. However, the consultation will simply focus on what the public thinks of the three options. The process is depicted below. As you can say, once feedback is received on the options, Council will vote on which, if any, of the three options, it will support through to Scheme Initiation.
Scheme Initiation requires a Scheme Board to be set up jointly with central government, which will then commission the more detailed work. That Board will finalise the detailed proposal, obtain public input and require approval of Council and then the Transport Minister to be proceed. The current schedule assumes approval will be finalised in mid 2028, with implementation no earlier than 2030. That means there is plenty of work yet to do.
The options are:
• City centre cordon
• City centre and fringe cordon
• Core motorways with cordon (either 1A or 1C)
The common elements to all proposals are:
- AM peak charges in one direction, PM peak charges in the other direction
- Shoulder charges so that rates rise and decline either side of the peak
- No interpeak charges
City centre cordon
The city centre cordon concept sees an AM peak charge of NZ$3-NZ$4 and PM charge of NZ$2-$3. It would charge around 3.1% of all morning peak car trips, but 23% of trips would see some saving in time. It would reduce car trips by 0.8% and speeds increased by 1.0-2.4% region wide on average (although clearly it would be much higher closer to the cordon and lower in outer suburbs), with a reduction in region wide congestion of 2-4%. The estimate is that those paying will save four minutes on average.
It has the following key advantages:
• Most passenger (unlike freight) trips are modally substitutable either by PT or active modes
• Exclusion of the hospital (and Port)
• Through trips are excluded (which are much less easily substitutable by PT).
However, it has very limited impact. Beyond approach routes into the city centre, it is unlikely that there would be much effect noticed on congestion. While there may be some easing of congestion through the Central Motorway Junction, it is unclear how sustainable that would be as it may attract more through traffic through the centre. It would also encourage some degree of “park and ride” or “park and walk” activity near its fringe, making car parking in Newmarket and Ponsonby significantly more valuable simple because of where the cordon is drawn.
Even those who pay may not notice much improvement, because so much congestion is on motorway and arterial routes far from the downtown cordon, so the benefits of paying to drive in the peaks might be perceived as poor value. The benefits at the city end would be noticeable, but if drivers remain on largely slow roads such as Onewa Road or the Northwestern Motorway for long periods, it may suffer from perceptions of whether it was worth it.
Maybe it is good as a first step, to demonstrate it has some impact, but it is hardly worth being the major scheme.
City centre and fringe cordon
The city centre and fringe cordon has more merit as it captures more trips, including Newmarket, Newtown, Ponsonby and Parnell (there is ambiguity about this). This is likely to have more notable impacts on trips on all arterials and motorways approaching the city. It might be somewhat trivial, but as the “middle” option, I am betting this is the one most likely to be advanced. It moves the “park and ride” issue further out, more into suburban areas (so there will be a need for more residents’ parking or on-road parking restrictions in neighbouring suburbs).
It is notable that this proposal has much higher charges in the AM peak ($5-$6), with $2-$3 in the PM peak, so it is unclear how much of the higher benefits is a function of price, not scheme design. It sees 5.1% of AM peak car traffic charged, with a 1.4% reduction in region wide car traffic. The effect is a 1.0-4.1% increase in region wide traffic speeds (again it seems the averaging will see little impact beyond the Isthmus approach corridors). This represents a 3-6% reduction in congestion across the region. Those paying are estimated to save five minutes on average.
A big issue is inclusion of the hospital, which either can be ignored (as peak only charges do not affect many users), or some discount or subsidy can be offered to vulnerable users with appointments. That would add some costs and require careful design (I recall designing and modelling such an option for Manchester).
Overall, it would demonstrate noticeable benefits for the inner isthmus and even roads approaching the Northern Motorway from the lower North Shore but could only be seen as a first step. The inner motorways would benefit with the reduction in trips using them, but it seems likely this would not be sustainable, as the Central Motorway Junction would gain an uplift in level of service compared to the Western Ring Road, which may attract a transfer of vehicles to take advantage of the (uncharged) time saving.
Core motorways with cordon
Core motorways with cordon is easily the most superior option from the perspective of congestion reduction. Noting it could be included with either of the cordon options above.
The charge would indicatively cover the Northern Motorway (SH1) from the Harbour Bridge south along the Southern Motorway to the Mt Wellington Interchange, and along the Northwestern Motorway (SH16) to the Waterview Interchange, alongside a cordon. The proposal is for peak direction charging on the motorways, although this could be bi-directional. $5 is proposed for the AM peak to access the motorway and the cordon.
The effect is to target 6.9% of car trips in Auckland, reducing car trips by 2% (it is notable that this isn’t a significant increase on the city centre and fringe cordon). It increases regionwide speeds by 4-6%, reducing congestion by 13%. There would be a 9-12 minute time saving on motorways, with a 5 minute saving crossing the cordon (it is not clear if the savings accumulate for those driving on the motorway to cross the cordon). This is significant, but indicates that this option crosses the tipping point where traffic conditions break down, and relieves traffic volumes enough to allow a much more efficient flow of traffic. While 93% of car trips across the region in the peak are not charged, 31% are expected to benefit. Unfortunately, because the option includes no options to prevent rat-running off the motorways, it also predicts 12% would experience minor delays due to diversion.
That point is worth noting only because the option has been developed rather simplistically, when it is technically possible to capture rat running with appropriate sets of number plate camera (ANPR) to deter drivers from leaving the motorway to avoid the charge then using local roads to go past a motorway offramp point. Detailed traffic modelling should be used to ensure this can be addressed.
However, it is clear this option is the one with the most merit in transport policy terms. It has the attraction of being able to be tailored more finely for the conditions on each of the three motorways. It shouldn’t be the same fee on each route in each direction, and at a later stage there are merits in extending charge times on corridors that have enduring congestion – notably the Southern Motorway between Greenlane and Mt Wellington.
Are there better options?
This will be a source of some debate.
Double cordon?
One considered was a double cordon on the Isthmus, which is a bad idea. The proposal below was sourced from the Options Assessment and Policy Framework report (PDF)
Besides the downtown, it added an inner cordon, which would still exempt through trips on the motorway, but charge anyone entering either of the cordons in peak times (so those within the outer cordon would still be charged to enter the inner one). Although it has some positive impacts, this is offset by the blunt impact of having a cordon cutting through residential areas, separating homes from schools, parks, shops and other local amenities for no other reason that the convenience of a traffic engineer drawing the line. It is quite unlike the city centre, which is bounded by the Central Motorway Junction, Grafton Gully and the harbour.
Cordons are effective and avoid serious distortions if there are natural geographic or large scale artificial boundaries which a cordon can be placed onto. Stockholm has much of this, London not so much, but the very low proportion of car trips taken in inner London saw the distortions being very minor indeed. Cordons are for the sake of simplicity and ease of understanding. However, cordons through suburban residential areas have considerable scope to create distortions. Gothenburg experienced this in the northern suburb of Backa, where the cordon literally splits the suburb in two. This meant that local residents, notably elderly ones, driving from their homes to local amenities faced the same fee as those driving into the central city. Technology has been implemented so that only people driving from outside Gothenburg are charged when passing the cordon that runs through Backa (the Backa exemption). The scale of Auckland, which is much larger than Gothenburg, means that a cordon beyond the city centre would mean residents literally charged for taking cars one block, or charged to take children to one school but not another nearby.
I am pleased this option has been rejected, and I fear the city centre and fringe cordon might present some similar issues, but this is about as far as any cordon should go in Auckland
Motorway hotspots
Another option that was rejected was pricing targeted motorway hotspots.
The concept was to price the most congested parts of the network, effectively creating a pilot scheme that could demonstrate the benefits of time-of-use pricing before a wider rollout. While it was never intended as the end-state for Auckland, it could have delivered valuable evidence and public familiarity with road pricing. Unfortunately, I think the option was short-changed by the way it was designed and assessed.
First, no effort was made to mitigate rat-running around charging points. ANPR systems can identify vehicles that leave a motorway immediately before a charging point and rejoin shortly afterwards. Charges can then be applied only to those passing both camera locations, while legitimate exiting traffic remains exempt. The Backa exemption in Gothenburg demonstrates that this is both feasible and established practice. Ruling out motorway hotspot charging partly because of diversion impacts, without incorporating available mitigation measures, risks understating its potential benefits.
Second, modelling behavioural responses remains inherently crude. This is not a criticism of the modellers; it reflects the difficulty of estimating how many people might:
- travel four rather than five days a week;
- shift travel by an hour or two; or
- combine trips more efficiently.
Motorway hotspot charging is likely to rely more on changes in travel timing and frequency than on mode shift, although expanding alternative transport options remains important. The most obvious gap is the absence of the Northwestern Busway, although the corridor already benefits from bus lanes and could support significantly enhanced services.
Finally, the assessment framework appears to favour options with the largest region-wide impacts. That is understandable, but smaller-scale interventions will inevitably produce more localised benefits. Singapore's Electronic Road Pricing system evolved through precisely this approach, targeting specific congestion points and expanding over time. Rather than attempting to solve congestion everywhere simultaneously, it focused on maintaining traffic flow where congestion was most severe.
Too often in the report materials Singapore is depicted more as the Area Licensing Scheme from 1975 (which was a small cordon with manual enforcement of paper based permits) rather than the Electronic Road Pricing system which evolved from 1995 onwards.
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| Singapore ERP charging points |
Auckland could trial a small number of motorway segments with simple, targeted pricing designed to improve traffic flow on those corridors. Such an approach would not transform the entire network, but it might deliver visible results and prove easier to gain public acceptance for than a larger and more comprehensive scheme.
Distance based option
20 years ago, the UK Department for Transport was funding local authorities to develop congestion pricing schemes that would leap ahead of the level of sophistication of the London Congestion Charge (which wouldn't be hard). One way it was going to do this was to fund piloting an option for motorists to pay by distance, time of day and location, rather than just time of day and location, by allowing those who want to, to use in-vehicle technology to measure distance at peak times only, on specific roads identified beyond specific boundaries.
In the New Zealand context this could mean that subscribers to any of the three existing electronic road user charging (eRUC) providers could be charged directly, not based on entering a cordon or a motorway as a flat fee, but by kilometre and have that be at a much lower rate until the fee accumulated to the full charge. The ability to do this has not been explored at all to date, but once the Land Transport (Revenue) Amendment Bill passes, there may be more scope for new entrants into the eRUC market to offer an option to customers to not just pay RUC automatically, but to pay on a different basis to the blunt single charge approach anticipated.
I don't expect either time or budget permitted exploring this further, but it is definitely something that should be considered not just for commercial vehicle users, but any private motorists who wish to do so. e.g. it may be much cheaper to pay for a few kms of driving on a charged motorway in the AM peak than a single flat charge, and also more directly discourage rat running.
Next steps
As public discussion expands, resistance is inevitable.
The Council debate revealed a vocal minority opposed to road pricing in principle, alongside a group of sceptics who remain open to persuasion. Those concerns are understandable. Road pricing is a new charge, and net revenues are expected to be reinvested in the transport system. Questions about whether that spending represents value for money, and whether those paying directly benefit, are legitimate and deserve answers.
What has been largely absent from the debate, however, is a clear discussion about the cost of congestion itself on a personal level, rather than the multi-billion dollar aggregate which most people cannot get their heads around.
No major city has successfully eliminated congestion by building its way out of the problem, whether through road expansion or investment in alternative modes alone. Managing demand is an essential part of the solution.
For Aucklanders, congestion means waking earlier, arriving home later, spending less time with family and leisure activities, and consuming more fuel or electricity. For businesses, it means fewer deliveries, fewer service calls, fewer meetings and lower productivity. Congestion makes the city less efficient, less prosperous and less liveable.
None of the options under consideration will eliminate congestion. They can, however, make the network function more efficiently, improve travel time reliability, encourage better use of alternative modes, and spread demand more evenly across the day.
That alone would be a worthwhile outcome.
Most importantly, momentum must not be lost. Progress to date has been slow, perhaps reflecting the complexity of joint decision-making between central and local government. If the proposals pass the next stage, careful public communication will be critical. The detailed design process must address genuine concerns while avoiding the misunderstandings that so often dominate debates about road pricing.
I look forward to the consultation beginning in November 2026.
What to do?
Clearly those who have strong views on congestion pricing in Auckland should participate in the consultation, but they should all read the documentation provided along with earlier reports (links above). The likelihood that there will be a lot of public opposition is fairly reasonable and understandable, but what would be most productive is to get some indication of the options people dislike and like the most, and why. Besides helping to select the best option, it would also help to refine options and indicate concerns that perhaps haven't been explored sufficiently. There is also merit in understanding whether opponents will be affected directly or not, as well as those who will benefit. What is almost invisible is that bus users at peak times are likely to benefit noticeably with less congestion, as long as buses are not overcrowded as well.
I'm a firm believer that pricing can be designed in a way that has significantly positive outcomes with negative outcomes that can be mitigated, with major city shaping effects. It is particularly important for those who see road pricing as a great tool to punish driving and treat motorists as "car fascists" (as a politician once quipped a few years ago) to end that sort of talk. Nothing will kill off road pricing more than it being dominated by people who want to treat driving as a malignant activity, and by default treat people's choices around where they live, work and play as needing "correction". That's not what the intention of the legislation is, and it is notable that a centre-right government in New Zealand has advanced this policy with the primary objective of easing gridlock, not raising money and not punishing driving. If you can't convince the people that will have to pay that they can be better off from this, it isn't going to proceed, and if you seek to design it so they are not, then it definitely won't.
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