NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS NEWS
Empowering Kiwi Businesses
Auckland’s road freight industry is pressing for freight planning to be built into the city’s growth strategy, after Mayor Wayne Brown released a manifesto titled Auckland, A City for Two Million. The document sets out the mayor’s position on how the region should absorb a population of that size, and it commits to moving people and goods across the region efficiently while getting more out of the existing transport network.
The stakes are national and local. Auckland generates around 40 per cent of New Zealand’s economy and holds the country’s largest import port, its main international airport, and the warehouses and distribution centres that supply the rest of the country. Some 93 per cent of freight leaving Auckland travels by road, which means supermarket shelves, hospital supply runs, and new apartment builds all depend on trucks getting through.
Freight accounts for five to eight per cent of trips during Auckland’s congested peaks, according to figures cited by the road freight sector. That congestion now costs an estimated $2.6 billion a year, up from $1 billion in 2019.
Justin Tighe-Umbers, chief executive of National Road Carriers, the industry body representing road freight operators, has set out four things the sector wants from the plan. First, measurement: freight task performance tracked, reported, and optimised, with journey times and route reliability published as routinely as bus punctuality is now.
The second is protection. The Strategic Freight Network should be maintained as the city densifies and road space is reallocated, so that routes carrying goods are not squeezed out by other uses of the same corridors.
The third request is an early seat at the table. The industry wants to be involved at concept and pre-design stage on the projects that will shape freight movement for decades: the additional harbour crossing, the Roads of National Significance, the Avondale–Southdown rail link, level crossing removals, and Time of Use charging.
The fourth is a strategic target for improving freight task performance as the city grows, giving the plan something measurable to aim at rather than an aspiration alone.
The planning machinery has shifted in the sector’s favour. Auckland Council has established a new Directorate of Transport and Infrastructure, which brings transport strategy and delivery back under one roof. In September, the council retained the Regional Freight Transport Plan and its Strategic Freight Network.
For businesses that rely on goods moving into, out of, or across Auckland, the practical question is whether delivery times hold up as the city grows. Congestion at the estimated levels adds cost and uncertainty to every consignment, and businesses sending and receiving freight, not just the operators running the trucks, bear those costs.
Publishing freight journey times and reliability alongside bus punctuality would give businesses a public measure of network performance, rather than leaving them to discover delays through their own schedules. A maintained Strategic Freight Network, meanwhile, would give operators and their customers some certainty about which routes will keep carrying goods as road space is reallocated.
Early involvement on the harbour crossing, the Roads of National Significance, the Avondale–Southdown rail link, level crossing removals, and Time of Use charging matters because decisions on those projects will shape freight movement for decades. Once a route is designed and built, the freight consequences are locked in.
The manifesto opens with the idea that when Auckland succeeds, New Zealand succeeds. The freight sector argues that the trucks doing the supplying are part of how that success is delivered, and that the people driving them deserve a planning process that accounts for their work.
Council research has found that drivers take great pride in keeping the economy moving. Behind each truck is a driver who starts before dawn and steers a fully loaded rig through a city that keeps expanding.
The mayor wants Auckland represented when the big decisions are made. The freight sector’s position is that Auckland should be represented when it makes these decisions, and that a city heading for two million residents needs to keep the trucks that feed, build, and supply it moving.
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