Steven Joyce says no to Auckland central rail loop

Blue lines are the existing, the red is the proposed new underground line.

Yesterday this press release from the Beehive stated that the report that Steven Joyce asked the Treasury and Ministry of Transport to produce on the Auckland City Council's proposed rail loop under the city from the Britomart terminal to Mt Eden supports his attitude that it won't get central government support--meaning that the Auckland City Council will have to pay for it itself.

As the Better Transport website says, Steven Joyce's answer to the ever increasing traffic in Auckland over the next 30 years seems to be to cater for 29,000 cars.

At the moment, of course, central government finances are more than stretched with the cost of the bail-out of dodgy finance companies and the cost of the Christchurch earthquakes, so one couldn't expect new projects to commence for a couple of years.  But the Government has also cancelled the planned increased in petrol tax which could have contributed to this project. Something that increases the country's railway network capacity is ideologically unpalatable to Mr Joyce.

Update
The government subsequently did a U-turn on this subject.