In news that will surprise absolutely no one stuck in traffic on the Southern Motorway, it appears Auckland Transport has found a new and exciting way to not fix Auckland’s transport woes. Instead of filling potholes or synchronising traffic lights, they’ve splurged over $147,000 to pay social media influencers to tell you that the car you’re sitting in is, in fact, a bad life choice.
According to a press release from the rightly miffed Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance, AT shelled out precisely $147,765 between May 2024 and May 2025 on this grand plan. The mission? A series of campaigns all centred on one simple, baffling theme: dissuading Aucklanders from using their personal vehicles.
The Alliance, doing the quick maths that AT seemingly won’t confirm, points out that this sum, divided among the 10 unnamed influencers, averages out to nearly $15,000 per person. That’s a tidy sum for a few filtered photos and a caption that probably reads something like, “#Sponsored #DitchTheDrive #LoveTheBus (EvenThoughIt’sLate)”. All paid for by the good ratepayers of Auckland, of course.
As Alliance spokesman Sam Warren so elegantly put it, “Auckland Transport really does everything but actually getting our roads moving, it’s ridiculous… You’re a transport provider; provide transport. That’s it”. It’s a refreshingly simple take on a situation mired in what Warren calls “ideological twaddle”.
This “obsession with engineering the public’s behaviour,” as the Alliance notes, seems to miss the point entirely. Motorists aren’t sitting in traffic for fun; they’re doing it because the alternatives often don’t stack up. The solution isn’t to spend six figures on a marketing campaign to shame them, but to, as Warren suggests, “focus on the basics well, provide excellent service and let Aucklanders choose what’s best for them”.
This latest spending spree couldn’t come at a more poignant time. Mayor Wayne Brown has just started swinging his CCO reform axe, having dissolved Eke Panuku and Tātaki Auckland Unlimited this week. With the Ratepayers’ Alliance pointing out that AT is “as guilty as the others for wasting ratepayer money,” it seems the transport body is next on the chopping block.
For $147,765, one has to wonder how many potholes could have been filled, how many kilometres of faded lines could have been repainted, or how many traffic consultants could have been hired to figure out why it takes 45 minutes to travel 5km. Instead, Aucklanders got some Instagram posts. You can’t make it up.
