e new Labour-led Government will meet with Auckland Mayor Phil Goff later this week to discuss a massive shift in the way ratepayers and motorists will pay for $15 billion worth of new rapid transit infrastructure in New Zealand's fastest growing and most congested city over the next decade. Less than a week into the job, new Housing and Transport Minister Phil Twyford has asked MBIE, the Transport Ministry and Treasury for advice on 20 different streams of work to kick off a mass planning programme to enable the building of tens of thousands of affordable homes and a transport network that can handle more than a million extra people. Twyford told Newsroom in an interview that the Government and the Auckland Council are looking at ways to fill a $6 billion funding hole over the next decade that the previous Government had given no indication of filling. The Council is up against its debt limits for its current AA credit rating and each notch downgrade caused by extra borrowing increases rates by around one percent per year. The new Government and the Auckland Council expect to work on using the National Land Transport Fund (previously dedicated to roads and motorways) to fund light rail, he said. The Council was also looking at using targeted rates on light rail and other rapid transit routes to capture the value uplift in property prices because of those plans. The Government would also introduce a 10c/litre regional fuel tax as an interim step to help fill the gap while a congestion charging system was being built over the next five to 10 years. Twyford said he also wanted to use the National Land Transport Fund to help fund rapid transit systems in cities, including for light rail and busways. Previously, the fund (paid for from fuel levies and road user charges) was dedicated to road building and repairs. He said rapid transit systems such as the Northern Busway made existing motorway infrastructure much more efficient and reduce congestion for car and truck drivers. The move will be controversial with truckies and others reluctant to pay directly for infrastructure they don't use directly, even though they benefit indirectly from it. Twyford has ordered an urgent rewrite of the Government Policy Statement (GPS) for the National Land Transport Fund to reflect the new Government's focus on investing in urban public transport infrastructure, rather than building more motorways. It would include new directions on the use of the National Land Transport Fund, which was forecast last year to spend $9.8 billion over the 2015-2018 period. He expects a new GPS within two months. Tywford expects a first meeting later this week between Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, and himself with Mayor Phil Goff to include the beginning of the start of a renegotiation of the Auckland Transport Alignment Programme (ATAP), which is the 30 year plan for Auckland Transport. The renegotiation was aimed at refocusing investment on light rail lines from the CBD to the Airport and from the CBD to West Auckland alongside State Highway 16, as well as cross-town buses and a new rapid transit bus system linking the Auckland Airport with train stations at Puhinui and Manukau. "There's a six billion dollar funding gap there that the former Government never really explained how they were going to fund that," Twyford said. - www.newsroom.co.nz