There’s an article in today’s Herald that effectively reports on Len Brown’s meeting with John Key yesterday. It seems that they discussed the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” in fairly lengthy detail:
Super City mayor-elect Len Brown last night gave his support to the Government’s $1.6 billion “holiday highway” from Puhoi to Wellsford despite promising Aucklanders his first priority would be improving rail services.”Clearly the Government have got the bit between their teeth in terms of Puhoi to Wellsford,” Mr Brown said. “It’s a road of national significance. I’m not going to get myself overly involved in that debate.”He was speaking after hosting Prime Minister John Key at a “first date” dinner at Manukau City Council where the two leaders dined on poached salmon and discussed some of the big issues facing Auckland.
Mr Key said he made it clear that certain things were important to the Government, including the Puhoi-to-Wellsford roading project.
It was something National campaigned on, it was important to Northland as well as Auckland and it fitted into the Government’s national plan, he said…
…Mr Brown said he hadn’t rolled over on the Puhoi-to-Wellsford project, nor was it a case of public transport going to the back of the queue.
“What I’ve been saying is that this has been determined by the government as a road of national significance. There are so many other issues I want to discuss and debate with them.
“Everyone knows what my primary priorities are outside the roading network and that is we really get some major go-forward in terms of investment in rail and public transport, ” Mr Brown said.
When I first read this I found myself incredibly disappointed. The ability of Len Brown and the Auckland Council to push for a more cost-effective solution for Puhoi-Wellsford was in my mind the main way that the government could free up around a billion dollars to put to funding the CBD Rail Tunnel. It does sound like Len Brown has “rolled over” on this issue – and doing so just a few days into his mayoralty would be so incredibly stupid. I mean it’s not like the government has done him any favours over the past few days by supporting his transport plans.
But, when you think about it, it’s almost too stupid to be true. By in large Len Brown seems to be a reasonably intelligent guy and he has some pretty clever advisors. Surely he wouldn’t give away such a big bargaining chip unless he got something pretty damn impressive in return. So perhaps he has done some sort of deal with John Key along the lines of “well I’ll support your holiday highway if you stump up a pretty big contribution to my CBD rail project.” With the business case for the CBD tunnel due out in a few days, it would make good sense to have some advancement on funding plans for it.
Let’s hope so, otherwise Len’s just made an utterly huge mistake.
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Think you might be being a bit hopeful here Josh. Looks like he may have rolled over at the first sign of pressure. Can’t see the govt would have given any assurances on the CBD loop at this early stage.
Like Banks before him the government put a bit of heat on and he’s folded. Disapointing.
Brown never said he’d get the project canned. He’s not said much at all about it, that I’ve read. He may well have determined that National won’t budge on this issue, because it’s a Road of Significance to Steven Joyce, and it’s better not wasting the energy. Like trying to teach a pig to sing, really. Joyce will happily imply that Auckland is being selfish and dismissing the needs of Northland when we object to the project, as witnessed by his comments in the House, and Brown’s quite smart enough to know that it’s a waste of political capital to be seen as an enemy of another region just so you can get money for your own.
Whether he got anything in return is anyone’s guess, but I certainly hope that he’s going to push Labour and the Greens to make this a big issue at the parliamentary level, because it’s that venue where getting this criminal waste of money canned will have to take place.
I’m disappointed that he isn’t pushing for the Campaign for Better Transport alternative to be considered, which was endorsed by the ARC. I hope he got some knowledgable advice on this before agreeing. The phrase “I’m not going to get myself overly involved in that debate” is worrying too as this is precisely the debate he should be involved in. Does he realise that he is endorsing the construction of a **toll** road with a very poor economic return?
And Key is being disingenuous when he says “it was something National campaigned on”. National clearly did not campaign on the construction of a new toll road between Puhoi and Wellsford, just as they didn’t campaign on diverting $250m of public transport funding to the Roads of National Significance. The phrase “Roads of National Significance” was not even invented until well after the election.
He did mention during campaigning that he supported it – I know because I saw it in the Rodney Times.
Would he actually have the power to stop it anyway? I suppose that his council could appeal the (eventual) application for resource consent to build it? Or it could write a spatial plan that essentially forbade it’s construction. But since the funding is 100% from central govt he can’t do anything to stop them putting billions into it.
What is needed most all is a a change of government, I can understand that Brown must of been put under pressure by National as their priority was to support the construction of Puhoi toll Holiday Highway. The bottom line is guys as long as National remain in power no further public transport improvements will be made, unless us the people push even harder for it, but knowing National they will always look after their own interests and put there pet projects ahead of the public.
Len Brown probably does want to see all these railway projects being built, but the other government doesn’t share his vision, this is what he was probably trying to convince to Key when they spoke the other night, but Key probably didn’t budge and left Brown in an awkward situation whether to oppose the construction and go at it alone or to make an awkward sacrifice and accept the project just to get his vision through.
You have to remember guys National hate the idea of public transport and as they are central government they have higher priority than Len Brown, deep down Len probably hates the project as much as we do, but realises there is nothing he can do about it at this stage. National have this thing in their head that Holiday Highway is of national significance and noting will change their vision, which I belive is pure selfishness in my opinion.
What doesn’t remain clear is what exactly was said, whether there is hope of any of the railway projects being built before 2020, whether they was willing to support the funding of it, this will remain a mystery for sometime.
Nicely summed-up. Brown’s swallowed a nasty political reality in the hope of getting somewhere with his vision, I suspect. National can make it completely impossible for him to achieve anything, for as long as they hold the purse strings. I wouldn’t be surprised if the conversation with Joyce, if not with Key, was along the lines of (in a Godfather voice) “Nice visions for public transport you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to the money for them. We’ve got this pet project that we like, and we think you should like it too.”
Until we get rid of National, nothing’s going to change. Labour may not be perfect, but all of the progress that’s been made on public transport in Auckland happened under Labour’s watch. National have done nothing good for it, except not remove funding for projects already underway, and they certainly haven’t helped speed up the electrification works.
Ok, what I’m reading here is that Brown isn’t going to interfere with Nationals highway plans (which admittedly are mostly interurban highways) in order to get support for his urban rail plans.
It does seem like we are heading for a case of Auckland funding it’s own rail expansions entirely, while the central government focuses on interubran transport. Honestly I hope they can find a way for Auckland to afford to do it alone.
Have to agree here this goverenment does not give a rats about PT other than using it for PR purposes to try to give the impression of balance and deflect critisisims. Sadly as i’ve said many times before there will be no further auckland rail expansion while these guys are in power. They will pay lip service to things like the CBD loop and then refer to them as long term projects. The truth of the matter is there will be no money available for any rail projects as long as these guys are in govt, every last dollar will be tied up in RONPS.
However Brown needs to keep the pressure up, the more they dig in the more irrational and out of touch they will appear.
National won’t want to lose an election over this. If pressure comes on them at the polls then Key will flip flop on this faster than you can say Rail of National Significance. Having said that I hope the voters turf them out as it will send a stronger message. You can’t win an election on a single issue but you can lose one.
Perhaps Len doesn’t want to be seen to be the mayor that brings down a government?
The other explanation may lie in the Herald’s pro National leanings?
At least not before he’s had a chance to put on the chains, at least. And there’s always the risk that Brownlee might declare that a lefty Super Mayor will interfere with the rebuilding of Christchurch by diverting necessary central government money, and appoint Banks as the first Super Mayor. The law does given him the power.
He got nothing lose by supporting it- all he has to say is that other projects need to be constructed first. I’m sure it will get constructed one day but if Len Brown has his way it will be closer to 2035 than 2025.
Funnily enough before Joyce nobody thought Puhoi to Wellsford was a priority before 2050, and the nobodies were right…
Yeah that is funny I think the most interesting topic should be what exactly was said. From what I’ve heard nothing constructive has been said regarding public transport other than Brown accepting “Holiday Highway” over a fancy meal of poach salmon. This tells me that National don’t want anything to do with further public transport investment and the talk was more to do with saying to Brown, we are the government and not anything you can do or say will change that. I think this signals selfishness and unfortunately it’s not likely that we’ll be seeing a change of government any time soon either as this is the only way that Brown’s vision will come true.
Yup, it sure smells like a convivial meal with the Godfather: How are you, Len my boy? Good, good. I hear you’ve got some nice visions for public transport in Auckland. Sure be a shame if something happened to the money for the current projects. Now, I’ve got this pet roading project up north, I think it would be good if you were to play nice about it. You hear what I’m saying?
The real question is what have these *ricks in government promised to whom? Is this project non-negotiable because of pride or because they’ve promised it to some pretty big paymasters?
An additional reading is a little like the the deal that clearly took place between Prime and Freeview under this government. First the state company had to role over, then later on the private one generously came to the party. It was made to look like there was no connection but clearly there was….
Bill English on radionz this morning spouted the same mantra – “rail is very expensive and uneconomic as we know from Kiwirail, we can’t make a profit out of rail and we have other things to allocate funds to”.
He needs to be challenged on BCR’s across options, over a specific time period, eg Holiday Highway over ten years compared to CBD loop over the same time period. Including externalities.
I’m sure Mike Lee will have something to say on the matter – he’s less likely to be ‘rolled’.
Ok, so how much profit is the highway going to make again?! How easy is it to make a profit out of a two billion dollar road?
Profit to the builders, or profit to the “community”? Coz those of us who read TB regularly are quite sure that the latter is deficit, not profit. Anyone who understands the numbers should be suspicious of claims that it’ll return positive.
So yes, I think it’s all about the return to the road builders, who historically are fairly generous contributors to National’s war chest.
Of course the Holiday highway is core Auckland business as it signals the future growth for Auckland as envisaged by NACT…… a suburban sprawl focussed multi billion dollar party between residential property developers, warehousing/shopping mall developers, civil engineering firms and roading interests. Wonder what their collective contribution to NACT’s fundraising was?
Oh….and not to forget, farmers who will make a handy fortune selling their land into suburban sprawl.
In other words we are looking at a repeat performance of Auckland’s development ever since the current Harbour Bridge opened in the 1950s.
I had trouble seeing the quoted comments as “Support”, almost commentary really.
As this National government has shown, if the public really wants something, they will flip flop on a whim. If enough Aucklanders demand the CBD tunnel be built, National will bow to the pressure, lest they lose votes in NZ’s biggest city.
Of course if you think this is a bad project, consider Transmission Gully. Trebling highway capacity where there is only just enough demand for double, parallel to a commuter rail link, when the alternative (if it were not for ridiculous claims of gold plating) would cost at least a quarter less and could be implemented in stages.
Furthermore, at least the population of Auckland is growing quite rapidly. Wellington’s population is pretty stable, meaning the need for a $3 billion northern corridor RoNS (the most expensive of the lot I think) is difficult to fathom.