Thomas Coghlan

And that's why the cap is lower everywhere outside of the Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch areas.

This doesn't do anything for you, really, if you live outside of those cities.

And the counter argument is there is a chance that if you live in a part of the country which isn't getting anything out of this policy, you might grow a wee bit resentful that Labour is throwing a lot of money behind this public transport policy, taking money that you pay in fuel taxes because you have to drive, because you have no other option, and they're taking money that you're paying in fuel taxes at a time when fuel is really expensive.

and they're spending that in cities where their voters predominantly live.

So that's the sort of counter-politics to this, is there is the chance for a bit of a backlash.

Yes, yes, it could.

And that's been the main attack.

Well, one of the main attacks so far is that it will increase ridership.

Some modelling suggests that 6%, 7% could even be higher because there's no doubt about it.

It's a really good deal.

So if it does increase ridership, then that will create capacity problems.

And if it does create capacity problems, then that all of a sudden becomes really expensive because...

If you're driving a bus and this policy means that your bus, which was 80% full, becomes 100% full, then the policy doesn't really cost you much.

It just makes your system more efficient.

But if the system means that all of a sudden you have one bus and you have to put on two buses or a bigger double-decker bus, then all of a sudden the policy starts to cost some real money.

And in a funny way, that would be a nice problem to have because it means you could sort of cut money from elsewhere in the system.

Maybe you spend less money on road maintenance or new roads.

But certainly if the policy is quite successful, then there are some unintended consequences in terms of public transport capacity.

And that can get quite expensive quite fast.

Yes, sadly, sadly, the benefit-cost ratio on that is, I think, very high.