Steven Joyce, Minister of Transport, is certainly having a busier week. After the myriad of media releases surrounding a new national petrol tax, the end of a regional fuel tax, confirmation that electric trains for Auckland are going ahead, more money for State Highways, less for local roads, walking cycling and public transport…. today we find out about the “seven roads of national importance“. I guess we should have a look at what they are:
- State Highway 1 between Puhoi and Wellsford. This one is certainly interesting as previously it hadn’t really been considered much of a priority. When ALPURT B2 opened back in late January there was a lot of media criticising how the two lanes of motorway heading northwards shouldn’t decrease down to one before the tunnel. Nobody’s really sure what this work actually would entail, considering building a 4 lane motorway between Warkworth and Wellsford would be nigh on impossible. Perhaps some safety improvements are on the cards along with a Warkworth bypass and the extension of 4-laning somewhat northwards towards Warkworth.
- Completion of the Auckland Western Ring Route. This effectively means the Waterview Connection as everything else has been either built or is currently under construction. This is interesting as the only thing the government has done so far about the Waterview Connection is delay it by probably about a year by forcing NZTA to look at cheaper alternatives than the multi-billion dollar tunnel that was ready to have its designation notified.
- Victoria Park bottleneck. As I’ve said before, this is one project that I’m OK with. The sooner the better I think.
- Waikato Expressway. If I’m cheeky I’d say anything that bypasses Hamilton and Huntly is a good thing! This project is largely justified on the basis of safety improvements (and also avoiding Hamilton), and it was going to happen anyway. I’m generally more supportive of inter-city roading projects as there are no viable public transport alternatives at the moment.
- Tauranga Eastern Corridor. I don’t know too much about this, except that it looks to turn the road between Tauranga and Te Puke into something like a motorway. Although it’s a fairly congested route at the moment, it does seem like this route is only really needed to allow Tauranga to sprawl even more to the west. Interestingly, Tauranga has grown in a way that would make a commuter rail system quite viable in the future (growth has been along the rail corridors and there’s potential for a rail station close to the CBD) – perhaps some funding should go to that instead?
- Wellington Northern Corridor. Well at least it’s not the Transmission Gully Motorway!
- Christchurch motorway projects. I don’t really know that much about these projects, but Christchurch is already a fairly auto dependent city (almost as bad as Auckland), with further motorway projects likely to only make that even more the case. That said, Christchurch has had virtually no transport spending in the past decade so they’re probably due something.
I’m certainly not opposed to all of these projects, as some are probably quite justified. However, this press release just reinforces the fact that the government sees State Highways as pretty much all that matters when it comes to transportation projects in the country. Where are the rail projects of national importance? I could certainly come up with a few! This type of approach to transport is hugely unbalanced towards roading projects, reinforcing the country’s automobile dependency. I may sound like a broken record, but with peak oil either just around the corner or having already occurred this imbalanced transportation agenda is playing Russian roulette with our future. How wise it is for us to put all our eggs in the roads basket?
It is also interesting to note that tolling has been considered as one way of advancing the Puhoi to Wellsford route (as well as the Eastern Tauranga bypass). Existing legislation on toll roads says that there has to be an easily accessible alternative to the toll road (like how the old State Highway 1 is a viable free alternative to the new ALPURT B2 toll road). Now this means either one of two things: firstly, it could mean that the government is considering the full realignment of the Puhoi-Wellsford section of State Highway 1, a project that would probably cost an absolutely massive amount of money, as the topography of the area means that a lot of tunnels would probably be necessary for a motorway grade road. Alternatively, the government could look at doing away with the legislation that requires a free alternative to be available. That would quite probably go against a lot of what National were saying before the election (where Maurice Williamson got squashed by John Key every time he even mentioned the word “toll”) and could lead to a huge number of toll roads around the country. Now I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to this, as road-pricing can be a fair way to pay for new projects, but it certainly would be an interesting change of tack.
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