The long and winding road: the Christchurch southern motorway as an illustration of the disconnect between financial, transport and land-use planning in New Zealand

Abstract

In their 1929 report The Economics of Motor Transport in Relation to Highways the Canterbury Progress League stated: ...the 1926 report of the Highways Board shows that although Canterbury possesses roughly 20 per cent of the motor vehicles and, presumably contributes 20 per cent of the motor revenue, only 8 per cent of the Highways Board expenditure was incurred in Canterbury… It is claimed, and justly claimed, that it is cheaper for the motorist to pay the tax than to run his car on bad roads, but the outstanding fact at the present time is that the Canterbury motorist is paying the taxes but is failing to secure the road improvements he is taxed to provide. This is the immediate and urgent question in Canterbury. This author’s own analysis of annual financial reports of the Highways Board and its successors from 1924 through to 2008 reveals that this “immediate and urgent question” has never been addressed, as is amply illustrated by figures 1 to 3. Figure 1 illustrates the fact that the percentage of Canterbury’s motor taxation spent on Canterbury roads has consistently been below that of other regions and, within the last 17 years, significantly below that of Auckland and Wellington.