In the comments, Rob Russell has alerted me to the fact that Rod Oram talked about transport and spatial planning on National Radio this morning. A link to listen to the item is here.

Somewhat coincidentally, I’ve also received today a copy of the original SAHA International assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the various Roads of National Significance that Rod Oram’s article a week and a bit ago referred to. The whole assessment can be read here, but I find page 33 the most interesting:

So there we go. Proof the Puhoi-Wellsford’s cost-benefit ratio is actually 0.4.

Share this

11 comments

  1. What we really want is consistency between the calculation of Puford’s BCR and the calculation of the CBD Rail Tunnel’s BCR. My reading of the CBD tunnel business case is that the benefits are measured over 30 years (see page 104 of the business case).

    I’m not sure whether the same has been done for Puford. It certainly wouldn’t seem to be the case in the NZTA scenario where the benefits run through to 2059 for some bizarre reason.

  2. Traditionally BCRs have been used to compare options for the same project. To compare BCRs across different projects, such as Puford vs CBD rail, is challenging because each project has a whole different set of assumptions, geographic areas and user bases.

    However, Puford is just dire whatever way you look at it. And, I say this again and again, but this is a ** toll road ** for which the toll has not been determined, and the effect of which has not been factored into any cost benefit study yet.

  3. Does this mean that if we account for only the benefits for road users from the CBDT, the BCR of the tunnel is still better than that for Puford? (given that the traditional BCR for the tunnel is 1.1 and half of the benefits are to motorists). Joyce has really shot himself in the foot here.

  4. i do wish Oram had told Ryan that Aucklanders are already using rail like mad…. tripled in 5 years without any extension of the of the network but an improvement of the service. Build it and we are desparate to come.

  5. Interesting, the Waikato expressway also has a very poor BCR and they are falling over themselves to progress that. At least it’s all out in the open now, this has nothing to do with economics. Does anyone remember the quote from Joyce saying that he would consider any transport project but the business case had to stack up? What a croc.

  6. Wouldn’t it be good to find all the occasions he has said that [that project should proceed on their BCRs- road or rail]? However he is doing his best to obfuscate all the BCR, muddle all the talk around them so that everyone, and especially lazy journalists can just hear and report his conclusions.

  7. I actually find all of this quite disturbing. Given all the evidence, independent reports etc, it’s a straight out abuse of power and appalling misuse of taxpayers’ money. Recent “scandals” of credit card (mis)use, (over)use of MP entitlement to travel discounts, wananga appointments of whanau, to give some examples, pale into insignifcance given the enormity of this abuse.
    Why isn’t there more made of this by opposition parties or am I missing something?
    I’ll join a march on this – I treasure the greenbelts we have in Auckland, for recreation and lifestyle and fiercely oppose further sprawl.
    NZ is slipping further and further down the ranks and it is the responsibility of our governors to deploy resources in a responsible manner. In any corporation this type of behaviour would see the board of directors sacked en masse.

  8. It’s interesting that some of the RoNS got their BCR’s pushed up, seemingly because they treated all projects as having the same useful life (before maintanance exceeds cost I presume) of 40 years…

    Which begs the question: Why is the NZ BCR process so screwed up projects aren’t even measured over the same time frame..?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *