Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has revealed what could be put on the chopping block after the Government announced the regional fuel tax will be gone by July.
The tax has been earmarked for various Auckland projects but, on Thursday, the Government announced it will be scrapped.
Brown said Auckland now faces a choice between raising the rates or cancelling transport projects.
"I just see it as an early skirmish in what will become an ongoing debate," he told Newshub.
The axing of the Auckland regional fuel tax - 11.5c per litre to pay for the city's transport projects - will leave a $1.2 billion hole in the council's transport funding.
"That money was being used to give you better roads," Brown stressed.
New projects, roads and busways are just some of the projects that will be paused as the council figures out how to fund them.
And according to Brown, some of them could be culled altogether.
Transport Minister Simeon Brown said scrapping the tax was about the cost of living.
"It's 11.5 cents per litre more for Aucklanders being spent on a range of priorities, which I don't think Aucklanders see as their priority," Simeon Brown told media on Thursday.
However, a Curia poll conducted by the Auckland Mayoral Office shows 44 percent of Aucklanders surveyed want to keep the fuel tax, 26 percent want projects cancelled, 19 percent say, "lift rates" and 10 percent are unsure.
"This is a simplistic move by the Government to solve something they told the public, and it will have unintended consequences that we will both have to deal with," Wayne Brown said.
And he's not buying the Transport Minister's cost of living argument.
So, what's on the chopping block? Well, there's $350m left in the fuel tax kitty - enough to cover the next stage of Auckland's Eastern Busway and City Rail Link trains.
However, on the scrap heap could be the final Eastern Busway stage and North Shore's Lake Rd.
"I'm sure the people of Lake Rd aren't going to be so happy to suddenly find they're not going to have Lake Rd done up," Wayne Brown said.
However, it's clear the Transport Minister's not budging - even joking on Thursday he's got the Mayor on his side.
"I'm sure the Mayor will be happy, there might be slightly less speed bumps being delivered as well," Simeon Brown said.
News flash - the Mayor's definitely not happy.
"You're a third of the Government, I'm a third of New Zealand. We've got to sit down and talk," Wayne Brown said.
It's road rage - but the political style.
