Auckland’s Mayor Suggests an Affordable Alternative as Incoming PM, Christopher Luxon, Plans to Abandon Light Rail – Update

For seven years the last government clung to its ever more costly Auckland Light Rail dream, but as costs rose so did the skepticism, not least from the current mayor. 

“They completely lost the sight of any rational economic judgement – so stopping, thinking again, what does Auckland need?” Brown said. 

He said, to start again, they need to “dump what they’ve got” and “get the snouts out of the trough”. 

But far from dismissing the idea out of hand, Brown’s looking overseas for solutions.  

He said the network in the French city of Angers costs just $53 million per kilometre – up against the $375 million which he described as being the cheapest option for the route linking the city centre to the airport. 

“Much cheaper rational way of fitting in what Auckland needs for its overall transport plan for people and freight,” Brown said. 

Transport advocate Matt Lowrie agrees costs could easily be slashed. 

“We could deliver it a lot cheaper and what that means is instead of building one line we could deliver three or four lines,” Lowrie suggested. 

Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said he’ll talk to Brown but the spend of up to $30 billion would be better put to other transport priorities. 

“We want to cancel Light Rail, we think it’s been a white elephant,” Luxon said. 

“We’ve spent up to $150 million over a number of years, it hasn’t progressed anything. 

Luxon wants to completely rule it out. 

“As you’ve seen in our transport for the future policy, there’s 13 roads of national significance, there’s four public transport projects – three of which are here in Auckland,” he said. 

He said the projects would be “game changers” and would “help people move around the city easily”.  

But Lowrie agrees with Brown – change the plan don’t scrap it. 

 “We need to address how many buses we have in our city centre, we need to make it easier for people to catch public transport,” Lowrie stressed. 

“We need to upgrade our town centres in places like Balmoral, Mount Roskill and Eden Valley – those needs all still exist and they all still justify the need for investment in light rail.” 

Auckland Light Rail Limited released a statement to Newshub, saying it understands the incoming Government will have a large programme across a wide range of portfolios it needs to consider and work through.  

They are ready to brief the incoming Minister when required.