Ask any Tauranga resident what our city’s biggest problem is and chances are the most frequent answer will be ‘traffic congestion’.
Sadly, there’s no easy way to make our traffic problems go away. Our rapid growth, geography and high dependency on private motor vehicles are major contributors to our traffic congestion problems and because there’s little scope for increasing the number of lanes on many of our roads, we have to look for other solutions to prevent the situation from getting worse.
A study undertaken by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and Tauranga City Council (2023) indicated that a variable road pricing system could provide a potential solution. The study concept was titled ‘SmartTrip’ and provided a high level initial investigation to determine the feasibility of such a system. It should be noted that there is currently no legislation to enable variable road pricing in NZ but the current government is looking to pass an Amendment Bill at the end of 2025 to enable schemes to be developed in congested urban areas in the future.
What is SmartTrip?
If such a scheme as the SmartTrip example of variable road pricing were introduced in the future, essentially variable charges across Tauranga’s roading network would be implemented based on peak travel times with lower costs when demand is less.
Its intent would be to encourage people to think about their road use and, where they can, change their travel time, work from home, share their vehicle use, or use another transport mode like public transport, cycling or walking. Those who chose to, or have to drive at peak travel times would enjoy a faster trip, saving them time and in many cases money.
Variable road pricing is not yet enabled through legislation in New Zealand but the current government is working on changes to enable schemes to be developed in the future as similar concepts have worked well elsewhere in the world. You can learn more about variable road pricing and the SmartTrip concept study (2023) under the document library.
Content updated June 2025.