Green MP Gareth Hughes put a few tricky questions about the holiday highway to Steven Joyce in parliament today:
You can read the transcript here.
While Mr Hughes fell for the typical mistake of trying to score a “king hit” with a rather too all encompassing assumption (even I somewhat agree with Steven Joyce when he says that it’s far too simple to say that public transport will always solve the problem and roads never will), the best question he asked by far – and the one that made Joyce squirm a bit in his reply, is outlined below:
Gareth Hughes: Given the Minister has said that more analysis is needed, why did he commit billions of dollars to the Pūhoi to Wellsford “Holiday Highway” in March 2009 when the business case was not completed until 9 months later, in December 2009, and, as the Minister said only 4 weeks ago, “No work had been done on this project prior to it being confirmed as a road of national significance”?
Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I point out to the member that the nomination of a road of national significance is not the final shape of the project; it continues, of course, to be refined. Again, I refer to the difference between a notional project, which talks about projected possible demand in the future, and a project that is creating the demand and is under spec right now. It is quite obvious that the road that he keeps trying to compare with this commuter rail project has demand on it right now and needs to be addressed for a range of reasons including safety, economic growth, and connection between Northland and the city of Auckland.
This is the key issue here, and Joyce struggled to make this response I think. There is clearly a double-standard going on here: on the one hand he rushed into approving funding for the Puhoi-Wellsford road in the Government Policy Statement (released in May last year) before a business case had even been undertaken for the project (that wasn’t complete until December). Yet on the other hand, even when a highly detailed business case for the CBD Rail Tunnel has been completed, Joyce is saying that there’s not enough information, that it needs more detail, that it’s too early to think about funding and so on.
Furthermore, there are some interesting potential follow-up questions to probe his answer a bit deeper.
- By saying that the RoNS is not in its final shape, is the Minister saying that cheaper and most cost-effective solutions such as that proposed by “Operation Lifesaver” might warrant further consideration to ensure that investment in upgrading State Highway 1 between Puhoi and Wellsford provides good value for money?
- On what basis has the Minister asserted that Puhoi-Wellsford is ‘under spec’ now, considering that the road generally only suffers from severe congestion during holiday periods?
- Does the Minister realise that by early next year Britomart railway station will be handling 20 trains per hour, and so therefore essentially be ‘at capacity’? In what way does this not indicate that Auckland’s rail system is ‘under spec’?
- Is the Minister saying that because these are two different types of project: one a commuter rail project and the other an inter-regional roading project – that the requirement for investment in cost-effectiveness only matters when it comes to rail projects, but not roading projects?
It’s amusing to think what things would be like if Joyce adopted the same approach for the CBD Rail Tunnel as he did for Puhoi-Wellsford. Funding for the project would have been granted back in March last year probably, just as the business case was beginning. Then, even if the CBD Tunnel project had come back with a far poorer business case than it did in reality, Joyce would be saying things like “we’ve got the money for this CBD Rail Tunnel, the only thing that matters is getting it done as soon as possible.”
Weird how he hasn’t done that, isn’t it?
Processing...
He’s holding Auckland back!
“on the one hand he rushed into approving funding for the Puhoi-Wellsford road in the Government Policy Statement (released in May last year) before a business case had even been undertaken for the project”
Similarly, Len Brown promised to build the CBD tunnel before the business case was complete. And promised to build a rail line to the North Shore before anyone had even thought to begin a business case. Which is all completely normal because many things that the government or councils promise to do are political. If all government expenditure was subject to a cost-benefit analysis then probably most of it would be cut as being unjustifiable, except politically. In doubt? If so, try and find business cases for arts funding, government funded broadband, foreign aid, interest free student loans, women’s affairs, investigation of serious crime, anti-smoking campaigns, operations for old people, kindergartens, or a government owned bank.
Of course obi, but Joyce makes such a big issue of the CBD Rail Tunnel having to have an absolutely perfect business case before he will even consider it. Surely you see the double-standard?
No, obi doesn’t, because he’s either a paid shill probably working in Joyce’s office, or an enthusiastic amateur from Kiwiblog.
Doloras… So anyone who doesn’t support your opinions must be paid to do so, be employed to do so, or an amateur as opposed to all the professionals here?
Admin… I am certain that Joyce is already considering the business case. It isn’t perfect and, in my opinion, needs extra study… especially around risks if costs blow out (like the 250% overrun on Manukau link) and projected passenger numbers which rely heavily on Auckland Council’s projections. But the transport case stacks up and the only issues are around who will pay for the thing. Brown could help this along by telling people how he had planned to pay for the project when he promised it. If he offers up, say, 75% of the money or suggests a method for paying for 75% such as a regional fuel levy or rates increase then I’m certain the government would kick in the rest.
I think you read too much in to exchanges in parliament. The idea of question time is that the opposition, whoever they are, ask questions that promote some simplistic viewpoint that appeals as a sound bite. Then the government, backed by plenty of public service analysis, slap them down. It’s all about point scoring and almost nothing to do about policy.
Why does Auckland have to come to the table with a maximum number first? IBM estimate that congestion in Auckland (that’s Auckland, not Wellsford/Warkworth, in case you get confused) is a drag of 2-4% of regional GDP, or annually $960m-$1.92b on a GDP of $48b. That’s quite a lot of lost money, and the tunnel will help get at least some more people off the road by bringing trains closer to their final destination.
Improving economic performance benefits the country generally more than it benefits the council specifically, which puts the onus on the country to chip in a big wad of cash.
If the government comes and says “We’ll pay x%”, Auckland can worry about finding the rest if it’s so important. But without knowing what the government will pay (and right now the contribution signal we’re getting is a big, fat zero) it’s hard to investigate how to fund the rest. Funding the whole thing should not fall on Auckland, because the benefits are not, contrary to the Minister of Trucks’ assertions, purely about commutes. Reducing congestion helps business, and helps business a lot if IBM’s numbers are correct. We can’t keep building roads, and we’ve got a nice new motorway link at Manukau to prove that building roads doesn’t fix congestion it merely shuffles it around. So we need a better solution, and a motorway for holiday makers doesn’t cut it.
“Why does Auckland have to come to the table with a maximum number first?”
Because Brown promised to build the tunnel. The government didn’t. The ball is in Brown’s court. It is up to him to tell us how he planned to deliver on his promise.
So what level do you suggest the council and the government invest in the project, would you be happy if he came out and said we will put in 40% (along with a way to actually pay it) and that we would like the government to contribute 60% like suggested in the study?
What if the government says they will only contribute 20%
What about the talk of a new harbour crossing, the government has talked a few times about that but has never suggested we might need to help fund it so is it ok for them to fund all of that but only a limited amount of the CBDRL?
Brown likely assumed, and not unreasonably, that the government would chip in a fair whack of the cost. Finding out that the Minister of Trucks, Minister of non-Finance and Prime Trucking-Lobby-Puppet Minister are actually unreasonable as all hell has probably come as a heck of a shock. It’s certainly shocking to a lot of voters that this supposedly business-savvy government cares not a jot for sensible expenditure.
“So what level do you suggest the council and the government invest in the project”
I have no opinion on this. It is a matter for negotiation. But Brown must have had ideas on both the proportion of funding and the source of the Auckland funding when he promised the tunnel. Has he presented his ideas to the government? I don’t know, but he certainly hasn’t presented them to the public yet.
“What about the talk of a new harbour crossing”
If you’re talking road only, then this would be an essential link in SH1 joining up Northland to Auckland. I’d expect the government to pay for all of it via existing fuel taxes. However, this changes if the Mayor of Auckland promises to build it. In that case then all bets are off since it is up to the Mayor to deliver on his or her promises.
But it isn’t an essential link to Northland, there is an existing bridge that is perfectly safe (the central spans) and we will have the WRR completed shortly, any other crossing would be a commuter project to allow more people to drive to and from the North Shore. It would be interesting to see what % of vehicles crossing the bridge are local commuters and what % are going to Northland, I think this just shows that you only thing things are essential and worthy of government funds if they are roads.
“Promises” that politicians make before they get into power and actions taken by ministers are not comparable. Who actually believed Len Brown when he said he’ll get rail to the shore? Well, maybe he will but it is long way off and clearly up for a lot of debate before anything happens.
And the thing about transport projects is that they generally are up for cost-benefit analyses once a certain standard of accessibility has been met.
Also Len Brown did not criticise the Puford business case (inspite of its obvious failings) as being inadequete.
Actually, obi, most of those things you cite stack up economically.
The long-term benefits of early-childhood education are thoroughly recognised. If we put even a third of the money that’s being wasted on new prison space into ECE, we’d be seeing enormous benefits to the country within 15 years in terms of crime rates, health care, and educational outcomes. But that wouldn’t be pandering to the red-neck vote, so it won’t happen.
Anti-smoking campaigns? You don’t see how in a country with socialised medical care it could possibly be beneficial to reduce smoking rates? Really?
Interest-free student loans? Harder to quantify, certainly, but given how much we hear about the “brain drain” anything that reduces the incentive to emigrate permanently is a benefit to the country. We also provide far less assistance for tertiary study than most of the OECD, so it’s hardly an inexcusable policy.
Foreign aid? Not even going to go here.
Seriously, you come across as a troll so much of the time that I wonder why I bother.
Matt… The point isn’t whether these policies are individually justifiable or not. The point is that they almost certainly haven’t been business cased or subject to any benefits realisation analysis after delivery. If they were then I suspect the rate of return figures to be pretty grim. But it doesn’t matter because they are generally popular, people collectively want to spend money on them, and so politicians promise them. Nobody worries about the (non-existent?) business case for arts funding or the rate of return. Most people don’t worry about the rate of return on motorway projects either. People understand political imperatives and that not every government priority needs to stack up on a cost-benefit analysis.
Does pointing out that politicians make decisions on the basis of what is popular rather than on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis make me a troll? If so, I’m happy to wear the label.
My point was that most of them would stack up if subjected to a BCR analysis, and probably do better than Puford. Things like ECE should be subjected to a business case, because it’d provide the 30-year view that is absent from discussions about how much money is spent on it and how we need to cut funding so we can buy prisons.
I call you a borderline troll because your points don’t address Joyce’s behaviour. You excuse him stumping up for Puford with an incomplete (and now low-returning) business case but complain that Brown won’t talk turkey on a project that will benefit the entire national economy and should thus fairly be paid for in significant part by the entire nation. Joyce is a hypocrite, but you won’t admit it. You defend him, excuse the shit that is Puford, and say that the CBD tunnel case should be ignored because it’s incomplete. Puford is far, far worse, relies on much shakier calculations to get its returns positive, but not a peep do we hear from you criticising Joyce for supporting one but not t’other.
I don’t know enough about ECE to say whether it makes economic sense or not. I’d be interested in learning about it if you could provide a link to a study showing a relationship between pre-age 5 education and later criminal offending.
But to take another example I mentioned… The government spends $500m every 10 years in anti-smoking campaigns. Everyone in the country knows how bad smoking is and we’re taught it in schools. Does further reiteration of the message change behaviour measurably, or yield improved health outcomes? I suspect not. I’d be quite happy to cut funding completely and spend the money on urban rail projects.
I worked on the IT aspects of a project for Ministry of Health a few years ago. It involved promoting healthy eating. The Ministry project team were trying to work out how to judge success for their business case. I suggested improved life expectancy and lower heart disease. The project team didn’t like that idea and settled for the number of ads they could get on TV. To me that indicated an exceptionally bad business case, confusing outcomes with delivery method. National scrapped it after the election. I think it was a good call.
I’m not sure why you expect me to “address Joyce’s behaviour”. One project is his own initiative. The other originated with other people, but Len Brown has essentially taken ownership of it since he made it an election promise and became mayor. So of course different standards apply. It isn’t Joyce’s job to figure out how to deliver Brown’s promise. It is right for the government to help out for the reasons you’ve pointed out, but Brown is in the driving seat at this stage.
On ECE, try starting with Wikipedia: Chicago’s publicly-funded Child-Parent Centers have served almost 100,000 3- and 4-year-olds since 1967. Researchers tracked 989 of those children and 550 similar children not in the program for 14 years. The children who did not participate were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18.
ECE unquestionably sets a child up for good educational outcomes. By doing that they’re more likely to remain in school through to completion or move to non-schooling training, which is recognised as reducing the likelihood of becoming involved with criminal activity.
There’s plenty out there.
As for funding, see my other comment. Brown will very likely have expected significant taxpayer funding with Auckland being left to fund the remainder. 60:40 was the suggestion in the business case, which shows just how much value the drafters believe accrues to the country. This is not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is that Joyce is signalling zero taxpayer funding, and also that you seem to think that Brown has nothing else to do but fill a billion-dollar funding hole that exists as a result of Joyce being beholden to the trucking lobby. Given all his other priorities, trying to scrabble about and find another 60% of funding for a project that benefits the whole country doesn’t look like a terribly good use of his time.
Matt… Thanks for the ECE link. I’ll check it out tonight.
“and also that you seem to think that Brown has nothing else to do but fill a billion-dollar funding hole that exists as a result of Joyce being beholden to the trucking lobby”
I’m not sure where you think this funding hole is. I think you’re saying that if P2W was canceled then the money would automatically go to the CBD tunnel, rather than some other government priority or to debt reduction. But government funding just doesn’t work on the basis that if you persuade someone to cancel a program then you get to spend the money that was saved.
If Brown has something better to do than figure out how to deliver his election promises, then he should go for it. But I don’t see how you can then complain that delivering Brown’s promises should be someone else’s highest priority.
As for the trucking lobby thing… The figures presented here a few weeks (?) ago showed that truck kilometers increased by around 50% over the term of the last Labour government, but have decreased since National took over.
The funding hole is going from an expectation of some government funding to apparently zero government funding. Even if the expect split was only 50:50 that’s still a doubling of the amount of money that’s needed. The updated costs were also only available a fortnight ago when the case was released, so chasing an unknown sum of money isn’t a good use of time.
Brown has many things to juggle now that he’s Mayor. The tunnel is only one of many, many priorities, not least of which has been getting statements of intent set out for the CCOs. Long-term policy direction should be his highest priority at this point, given that he’s stepped into an effective historical void in terms of things that exist already.
Given that we’ve had a minor economic contraction since National took over, meaning fewer goods ordered, businesses closing, etc, are you surprised that truck kilometres have decreased? Trucks don’t just randomly drive around the country for the hell of it, and when things are tight there will also be a bigger focus on good logistics management to reduce non-revenue kilometres. That they grew so dramatically during economic expansion shows how significantly reliant on road freight we are. Doesn’t change the fact that National have stated they’re going to rework RUC, which will benefit heavy vehicle operators, and that the 53T vehicle permit scheme was explicitly configured such that permit costs don’t capture all the additional road damage that the heavier trucks do.
A few more questions,
5. The minister has continued to claim that the P2W road carries more people than the entire Auckland rail network and on 16 November 2010 the minister claimed that 24000 people per day use P2W. What maths does he use to determine that it is more than the rail network when even at the most basic calculation the rail network carries 24600 people per day however during on standard working days this could be 50% higher
He claimed 24k in this question in Parliament http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Business/QOA/c/0/9/49HansQ_20101117_00000009-9-Roading-Auckland-P-hoi-to-Wellsford-Route.htm
6. If two projects are of roughly equal value and have roughly the same number of current users, what is better to invest in, the project that will allow about double the current capacity or the one that will allow about 6 times the capacity over the same period.
7. What time period has the P2W motorway been calculated over to get a BCR of 1.1 and what time period has the CBDRL been calculated over to get a BCR of 1.1
8. What refinements have been made so far to the P2W motorway so far.
9. What controls is the minister placed on the P2W project to ensure it doesn’t go over budget and what will happen if it does?
10. If the P2W route is about improving the economic performance of Northland, have any other options for investment directly in the Northland region been considered.
11. Most of the economic benefits from P2W come from increases in forestry, being a bulk product is that not better suited to rail rather than putting more trucks on the road?
If we conservatively say that there were no trains for 21 days in the year ended October (anyone know the exact length of the full-network Christmas shut-down? Plus add a couple of days for Easter), the 9m passenger figure puts average daily rail patronage at over 26k. That’s fully 1/12 more passengers on average than Puford.
12. The NZTA has indicated that tolling the road would see about 70% of vehicles using the new road and the rest the old road, in this situation they have estimated that tolling would reduce the BCR by 0.1 – 0.4 depending on how high or low the toll is. As each option would put the BCR below 1 even with WEB’s is the minister going to rule out tolling and if so what impact does that make to how much funding would be available considering the current state of the governments books.
13. With the current state of the countries books, has the minister considered scaling back or delaying any of the RONS until we can afford them better?
14. What are the specs that determine if a road needs to be upgraded to motorway standard?
15. What roading projects in Auckland have relieved congestion on a particular route for more than 5 years?
16. How fast is rail patronage in Auckland growing and how fast are vehicle numbers growing on the P2W stretch of road.
17. How many people per day are expected to use the P2W road after it is upgraded to motorway standard.
18. Auckland is set to grow by over 600,000 people in the next few decades, how does he envisage these people getting around the city
Great work Matt. Also: why do only roads have national significance? And who decided this?
Joyce. He needs his HoliHi to get to his bach faster.
Since the announcement yesterday from Treasury yesterday that NZ in in the temporary economic doldrums, up to it’s belly button in debt, WHY are we spending a huge amount of money for a 60% loss on investment!?
Has someone emailed Bill English about this travesty, in plain english? (sorry about the pun)
Operation Lifesaver is standing head above the clouds as a rational band-aid to fix most of the problems with this road. Why isn’t NATIONAL (not Joyce) listening!?
I think that Steven Joyce is beginning to feel the pressure. There is a growing groundswell of opinion against him and his pet project of Puhoi to Wellsford. From one who has a direct inetrest in this project, I say keep up the pressure guys!
There is? Really? Not seeing so much of it in the media, sadly, and that’s where it’ll matter. Until we start seeing scathing editorials in Granny, and transport experts questioning Puford on CloseUp and Campbell Live, Joyce will bumble on behind his blinkers, supported by Shon Key and B’linglish and the other usual suspects, and the idea that they might be doing something that’s truly electorally unpopular will never occur to them.
If four seats in Auckland swing back to Labour, which is entirely possible given that the four seats that swung from Labour in ’08 are all serviced by rail and mostly occupied by voters who’ll be feeling the economic pinch from GST and rising petrol prices, National will be in a very precarious situation. Especially if the burghers of Epsom come to their senses and turf Rodney, thus saving us from the Zombie of Parliaments Past and the rest of his Act-olytes.
Great questions Matt and Josh, perhaps you could email them to Gareth Hughes to use?? I’m sure he would.
Just plaster the entire caucuses of both the Greens and Labour. Someone will pick up on these things, and hopefully some of them will get asked in the House.
Would use them is what i meant to post.
Isn’t it about time that Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition started opposing rather than sitting on their posteriors just collecting their over inflated salaries?
Hughes is trying. Just not especially hard.
Jacinda, if you’re reading this please, please, please get Matt L’s list of questions to MPs who will actually bloody well oppose Joyce rather than letting him get away with his fabrications and distortions. Point them at this blog. And exhort of them more effort in calling this profligate waste to account, because goodness knows someone needs to call him on the crap.
While I loathe the typical tool of the clueless left – the protest – it would be fun to get a campaign going where as many usual train users as possible used their cars to drive into the CBD on a specified day.
Thousands more cars into the CBD, bringing the CBD to a screeching halt, to highlight the importance of the rail tunnel and, in particular, the MoT’s indifference to it…..
Arrange for thousands of university students to do it during holiday time. That would achieve the desired result without trying to get working commuters to inconvenience themselves.
The pressure needs to continue to be heaped on. He can’t be allowed to just lie and not be called on it. That’s pathetic, the opposition needs to step up here. This something they could at least start to gain a bit of traction on if they want to get into. Then again perhaps they too are worried about risking those big RTF campaign contributions if they are too outspoken.
Matt. In reply to your question at 1.00pm. Yes there is a growing feeling that Joyce has overstepped the mark. Local media are getting involved and we are trying to assemble expert opinions so that we can spread the campaign to a wider audience, including radio, TV and national newspapers. However, there is a certain amount of apathy here from the residents who have been bullied by NZTA and local polititions into believing that it’s a lost cause. I’ve lost count of the number of people who tell me that “it’s going to happen anyway, so why fight it?”
We have also tried to get Her majesty’s opposition involved. So far the only ones to take up the cause are the Greens. (I’m meeting with Gareth Hughes on Friday). I’ll point him in the direction of this blog if he hasn’t already seen it and put the questions in front of him so that he can ask them of S Joyce. So far the Labour party have not responded.
Well i think Labour has convinced me not to vote for them.
Greens it is, then? If you can’t vote National or Labour because they’re useless on PT, kinda only leaves one alternative.
I’m hoping that the Greens will get a big chunk of the party vote from frustrated PT activists, which will put them into king-maker position next year. If Labour can manage to steal back swing seats from National in Auckland, a PT-friendly watermelon government is entirely possible.
The thing is if the Greens hadn’t ruled out working with Nats they could have got some policy concessions around PT, perhaps that is what they could look at doing next time.
The Greens’ membership made it abundantly clear that they are unhappy with the current arrangement with National. The leadership have to follow the members’ wishes, and in the case of National their philosophies are ultimately incompatible with those of the Greens: social justice, environmental consideration, the government dog wagging the business tail and not the other way around, etc. With the fall-out over voting for the Gerry Brownlee Cantabrian Dictatorship Act, the Greens’ leadership will be very, very cognisant of the need to not piss off the members further.
The Greens should be campaigning on social justice, they are portrayed as the environmental friendly party which has nothing to do social justice. In fact I know a number of people who would vote for them if they didn’t have those policies and just focused on the environmental stuff. Also by working with them they could probably be more successful than sitting on the other side of the house with no influence.
Well said Matt. And its why the Greens – while maintaining the same insular position – will never be worthy of my vote. Politics is about compromise. You can’t make much difference sitting on the bench.
And good points too on them playing around with social justice (and sounding like idiots) rather than sticking to their bread and butter.
You may find their position off-putting, but a lot of other people like that the Greens have a firm bottom line (at least supposedly). What does Key stand for, exactly? Or Goff, to a lesser extent. They’re both fickle, though Key much more so than Goff. Mostly we know exactly what the Greens’ position will be on any issue. Agree or not, you know what they think. That matters to many people, especially when faced with choosing between a grey man and a “reformed” econo-fascist masquerading as the leader of a workers’-rights party.
As for social justice, it does fit with their stance on behaving ethically. NZ also doesn’t have any other party with social justice aims (Labour’s current leader would be happy to go down the road of the US and UK when it comes to treading on civil liberties, for example), so the Greens are filling a need. Or were. The current leaders are far too right-wing in their attitudes to really be social justice activists, and that’s one reason that rumours of Bradford starting a social justice party with environmentalist leanings is entire plausible.
Yep Greens look like the only option left if you’ll pardon the pun.
Hi
A few questions need to be asked: where is Auckland candidates Kaye and Ardern on CBD rail Loop? Where’s Labour opposing RONs? I had a great day in Northland today meeting fired-up people and home-owners to stop Holiday Highway and save the rail line but meet two groups in two different towns who’d approached Labour for support but been ignored.
Good question suggestions and will look forward to asking Joyce them in Election Year – no need to email me I love this blog and read it regularly – if am a little tardy in responding in comments.
Also, I’d love other suggestions for Oral Questions so drop me an email: gareth.hughes[at]parliament.govt.nz
Cheers
Thanks for dropping by again and commenting Gareth.
I guess to be fair on Labour, they have been reasonably vociferous in their opposition to the Puhoi-Wellsford road. David Shearer also did a lot of hard work behind the scenes to help get a better outcome for the Waterview Connection.
However, it would be good to have all opposition parties making more noise about the CBD Rail Tunnel, and also making more noise about what a waste of money many of the RoNS are. I am starting to think that the only way the government is going to stump up with money for the CBD Rail Tunnel is if they’re afraid of losing a lot of Auckland votes by continuing to oppose it.
I regularly commute between Warkworth and Auckland. The drive is a sheer joy until I hit Greville Road at which point the motorway becomes a slowly moving parking lot. I can’t understand how anyone in Northland can think that the motorway extension somehow helps them – all it will do is help get more traffic into an already congested corridor. Any time savings a new motorway may provide will be more than consumed by waiting in an even slower moving parking lot trying to get into Auckland.
Before we can even think of extending motorways and encouraging yet more traffic onto the existing underperforming corridors into Auckland we need some form of mass transit to get people efficiently into and around Auckland. Buses have not done it – not enough space in the Park n Ride carparks. Mass transit rail will do it and a CBD rail tunnel is the way to go. For goodness sake – surely the politicians only have to look at how its done overseas to realise the benefits? Or are we still so stuck on the “number 8 fencing wire” mentality that we stubbornly refuse to adopt any ideas unless they are unique to NZ?
And on the political front – my vote next year will go to the party that shows it has the gumption to properly evaluate options and stop wasting precious taxpayers money.
That’s an excellent point actually: all the extra traffic attracted to using SH1 by the motorway extension will merely clog up the Northern Motorway at its city end.
But Admin then we can just widen the Northern Motorway, oh and then we’ll need another bridge, oh and spaghetti junction will need to be widened and then the Newmarket viaduct and then… As a software developer this sounds a lot like an infinite loop as the condition for breaking the loop (0 congestion) is impossible.
James B – 0 congestion may be impossible but its all about capacity management. As a developer you must know that if a disk gets to its capacity threshold it gets slower and slower – then you have to do something about it. You either add more disk (i.e. more capacity) or, if that is not possible you go back and look at the traffic and see how you can minimise it so that the existing capacity will cope. I see a rapid rail system as doing just that – minimising the traffic – same amount of data (people) less packets.
Yes but Steven Joyce and company keep saying first we get the motorways uncongested and then we work on PT. He doesn’t realise that PT is one of the tools to minimise congestion. So we get stuck in this loop of fixing bottlenecks and then causing them elsewhere.
Yes, James, it’s weird isn’t it? It’s almost like road building is an end in itself as congestion is turned around and used as proof that more roads are needed not that they aren’t working. Joyce is like a pusher in that regard, and Auckland is the junkie, problem is it looks like he’s killing his best client. Always a the sign of a bad dealer.
Obi on the ‘who really loves the truckers’ issue:
“The figures presented here a few weeks (?) ago showed that truck kilometers increased by around 50% over the term of the last Labour government, but have decreased since National took over.”
Well, that’s very convincing evidence, because there certainly hasn’t been any been any change in the national economy since 2008 that would reduce the amount of crap being hauled around by truck, would it?
Well done that man.