My second to most recent OIA request to NZTA finally arrived today. There are a number of interesting documents that I will read through over the next few days and potentially pick out parts that I think are worthy of discussion. The document which immediately stood out for checking was (unsurprisingly) the report to the November 2010 board meeting on progress for the Puhoi-Wellsford road of national significance. It would appear that this board paper (read it here) is what led to NZTA effectively abandoning the Warkworth-Wellsford section of this road for now due to geotechnical difficulties.
Well, at least that’s what I think it’s about. Due to the “need” for free and frank discussion to take place, most of the interesting stuff from the board paper has been withheld. For example:
If we try to guess what’s said here, I’m thinking that the cost of the project has ballooned and therefore if Warkworth to Wellsford is progressed at this stage then the cost-effectiveness (which is already extremely low) of the project will plummet even further.
There are a few rumours going around that NZTA has delayed the Warkworth to Wellsford section until 2032: eleven years beyond the original completion date of 2021. Now this is fine in some respects – the less money wasted on this road before we get a more sensible Minister of Transport, the better. But unless this is also followed up by safety improvements to the existing State Highway 1 through Dome Valley, we’re effectively condemning another 30 odd people to their deaths (around 25-30 people per decade die in road crashes in the Dome Valley). Shouldn’t we at least know the reasoning behind NZTA’s decisions?
A lot of the proposed “strategy” is also blacked out – but what is there is at least somewhat promising – as it refers to the need for safety improvements to be of prime consideration. Later on, the paper talks about tactics – and it certainly would be interesting to see what the middle tactic is:
It does seem to me as though this project is “falling off the rails” a bit. It will be interesting to see what NZTA’s response is to the feedback they get on the alignment of Puhoi-Warkworth.
Which reminds me, don’t forget to send in your submission before the 28th.
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“10 The section of SHI to Warkworth is tentatively classed as a high volume strategic route and under our aspirational levels of service targets will need to be widened to 4 lanes.”
Hmm, am I reading this right: ‘We need to widen this route to four lanes because we have aspirational goals of it being a high volume strategic route’.
Interesting!
Oddly enough, I see this as a good thing. This project has been one that has gained a reasonable amount of attention, and with the high associated costs – the OBVIOUS lack of transparency might get picked up on by mainstream media. This could be the shot in the foot that opens the floodgates…
I’m astonished that it took a study of presumably tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to work out the area has very challenging geotechnical conditions. I’m a geotechnical engineer who was based in North Auckland for 5 years and I pretty much every geotechnical engineer in the area knows how bad the ground conditions are through that section of the country. Landslides can start in some of the geologic units on slopes as shallow as 8 degrees! And if you wanted a much cheaper study go talk to the farming and forestry people of the area, they will tell you how bad the ground is.
They are spending $100mil on the study to determine and design the route
Wow, didn’t they need just $40 million to completely overhaul the North Auckland Line?
No that was more like $180mil to bring all of the lines up to spec and another $80mil for a link to Marsden Point
I’m always amazed by these figures. Wellington’s Transmission Gully was something like $84 million IIRC. Does anyone have an explanation for where this money goes? (Asides from into the pockets of Opus that is.)
To my mind $84m / $200k = 420 extremely qualified and well paid experts working for an entire year only on this geotech report and design. Was this the case? Even halving that (say 40m was spent on digging lots of overpriced holes) that’s still 210 extremely qualified and well paid experts working for an entire year — I can’t believe that this was the case. Can anyone enlighten me as to where this money goes?
“I’m always amazed by these figures. ”
I’m also always amazed at the cost and slow progress of any transport projects in NZ.
A short line extension (looks like it’s about 3kms) with 3 stations is going to cost AKL NZ$2.3B
For GBP200m London got a 4.3km extension to the DLR line, with 7 new stations. The extension comprises twin bore tunnels underneath the Thames, an 830m viaduct, five overground stations and two underground stations. 1.65km of the line is underground.
http://pressroom.dlr.co.uk/archive/details.asp?id=214
meanwhile cross rail will deliver a new line with about 100km of track, 39 stations, much of it underground, ducking and weaving around existing tunnels in under 9 years. (it was going to be 8 but they decided to save money and use less boring machines after the financial crises / change of government).
To be fair crossrail is expensive, about 16 billion pounds IIRC
Forgetting the construction costs… I don’t necessarily have a problem with those because they often seem to align to similar costs in Australia and elsewhere. It’s just the design and geotech investigation parts that I can’t fathom, they’re so ridiculously expensive, $100 million? Where does that go? Anyone here work in these fields and able to offer some insights into it?
Why doesn’t the reply from erentz have a reply link?
Anyway, crossrail is expensive, 15b pounds, but no more expensive per mile of track than the CBD rail tunnel and considering the massive amount of engineering that will go into crossrail i think that makes the CBD tunnel look expensive e.g. rebuilding new underground station at tottenham court rd under a massively built up area and to interchange between the 3 lines and e.g. the canary wharf station will be in dock water and have 6 levels of retail space. At my old work the staff restaurant was aside the water and it was really weird seeing the diggers at work below the water line where it used to be just water.
http://www.crossrail.co.uk/route/stations/canary-wharf/design#content
@ erentz
The cost to design a road like Transmission Gully is very large for a good reason. You are essentially following an active fault for some distance and need to cross it in at least one place. The fault moves a measurable distance every year, that to start with will cause you a lot of problems. However, how do you maintain an adequate Factor of Safety in the event of an earthquake where offsets due to fault rupture could be 5m? This requires some very clever Engineering and I would imagine will require the input of some world experts, their charge out fees will easily exceed $600/hour. When you look at how well Christchurch withstood the earthquake last year (as an extreme compare that with 250,000 people killed by the results of the earthquake in Haiti) you realise why there is such a large cost when the risk is high.
Your fee of $200k per person per year (~$100/hr) will these days buy you a graduate. Intermediate staff will be about $300k (~$150/hr) and senior staff in the order of $400k ($200/hr). When you start looking at these numbers costs very quickly get eaten up. In engineering the typical dollar multiplier from an employees salary is about 3 to 3.5 which allows for a profit margin in the order of about 10%.
Geotechnical drilling costs are in the order of $2000/day, testing can go up to $1500/test for something like a triaxial test. While that may seem expensive, especially when three or more will be done at a bridge abutment there can be significant savings by using less conservative values in design (I have seen 4 tests like this allow a design optimisation that removed $1M from a bridge abutment).
Investigation costs not only include the drilling and testing but can also include various instrumentation readings. These require people to go out and take measurements, for the best part of 16km of off road driving this is a day long activity that may be required weekly for a year or more.
Finally the costs of preparing the AEE, community consultation, risk workshops etc get very expensive very quickly. The consultation may require a half a dozen senior staff to sit around for a few hours so that they might be able to answer one question that gets thrown their way. They also need to prepare for such a consultation which can easily be another day or more of work.
I am please to see some semblance of common sense creeping in but there is still a lot to go. Interestingly they are starting to come under fire for the Waterview connection with independant specialists saying they have used the wrong figures to base emission’s off and have severely under estimated the impact of induced demand.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/transport/news/article.cfm?c_id=97&objectid=10701644
If they are making these kinds of mistakes on Waterview then it is pretty feasible that similar mistakes are being made on P2W which if they came to light would probably further put its viability in doubt.
Crazy, they build a six lane freeway and effectively claim nobody is going to use it (just that some people from other roads nearby will shift over, but no one will take their place). NZTA must be the only organisation in the world that claim they can make their already popular product more accessible and easier to use and it won’t result in more people using it!
I’d be interested to see how much regional traffic currently passes through Waterview via Great North Rd, and how much will pass through once the link to motorways together. I get the feeling it will be a lot more than current.
It’s not just a rumour. Steven Town of NZTA stated that the Warkworth to Wellsford section will not be completed until at least 2032 at a meeting I attended less than 2 weeks ago.
Another thing that hasn’t been raised, if the route from Warkworth to Wellsford isn’t feasible then does that call into question the route to Warkworth as that assumes that the northern part will follow roughly the same alignment as what exists currently. If they had to dramatically change that route to go more inland (like the rail line) then determining the Warkworth route seems like a waste.
If they were truly building a road to go to Wellsford and open up the north then I can’t understand why they didn’t open up the middle of the island and shove this high speed road between SH1 and SH16. Its almost a direct route from Puhoi to Wellsford. But then they would have had to have done something about access to Warkworth for all the commuter / holiday traffic. That should have been an upgrade of Woodcocks (its an existing road corridor) but then that would have made the time savings negligible between Warkworth and Auckland thus undermining even further the cost/benefit of this road. To have a new road shadowing an existing road really does nothing for the country at all.
What I don’t understand is why we have not seen the same amount of diligence in planning going into the alternative option of upgrading SH1 to remove the known problem spots. We have been told that remedial action on SH1 would cost more than the new road but has anyone seen the sums behind that statement?
There have been a number of studies done on upgrading the existing highway including costing and we have been trying to get copies. However, they are all in the posession of NZTA and each request is treated as an “OIA” which means that they can use delaying tactics to avoid releasing them. We asked the question at our recent meeting about the reasons for rejecting the upgrade option and were told that the report which discussed the various options (including rejecting upgrading and selecting the indicative route) was still in draft form and therefore could not be released to the public. I don’t understand how a decision can be made on the basis of a draft report. Surely draft means that it’s likely to change? It’s a smokescreen.
Despite the minister stating that the upgrade would cost as much as the motorway, NZTA do not claim this. They are saying that it’s too difficult.
Bob what they really mean is that they haven’t had enough time to “tweak” the findings in the draft report so that they support the decision that they want. Looks like the worst of American “spin doctoring” is alive and well at NZTA. Any of us who have been in project management know how this works – you focus on the findings that support the decision that you want and avoid or put less focus on the ones that don’t. Put in enough “facts and figures” to baffle all but the most astute and you can get anything past the board.
However, its appalling that we, who pay their salaries, have to go cap in hand for information and get a right royal run-around when we do ask through the proper channels. Its just plain arrogance!
What they need to realise is that by blanking so much of the document out all of us are going to automatically assume the worst and that they are hiding something that they know the public would not like to hear.
“told that the report which discussed the various options (including rejecting upgrading and selecting the indicative route) was still in draft form and therefore could not be released to the public”
This is the response I got from them when I tried getting the various reports on the Basin Reserve flyover. When finally they said they couldn’t give me a soft copy, but I could come in to review it in the office, I came in and they told me “sorry the engineer has taken it home to work on it” … seriously!? You’re telling me that NZTA keep everything in hard copy? Bullcrap. What a joke.
Let’s be honest, there is corruption at NZTA. It purposefully hides information, massages its processes, and fudges its figures to reach predetermined conclusions. That is quite simply corruption, so let’s not be afraid to use that word.
hmmm, I find the idea that an upgrade to existing motorway would cost mroe than building an entirely separate 4 lane highway very, very hard to believe.
To keep a road open and work around live traffic has a very large cost. In addition to that you have a negative economic impact during your construction period (trips become slower, more traffic jams etc…). Worse still if you’re required to meet a certain level of service for road users at particular times (say the Xmas holidays for the holiday highway) then your program is ruined resulting in duplicate re-work.
But the rationale of spending $2 Bill plus is not to help holiday traffic on the 6-8 weekends a year the road gets clogged (I can feel a Tui ad coming on!!). So shouldn’t it be all built at the same time. Getting traffic 5-8 minutes faster to the Dome Valley- where it will become clogged is not really much of a benefit.
You could spend 1/10th as much on unclogging some intersections in Auckland and be much better off in the long run.
Ugrading the existing highway to four lanes by with a lower design standard (i.e. 70-80km/h) must surely be a lot cheaper than the proposed motorway. There is an insane amount of earthworks required for the motorways, it’s basically massive cut followed by massive fill followed by massive viaduct the whole way along.
Roads that have been around a long time generally took the path of least resistance. SH1 is an example of this, I am not surprised that a new replacement road requires a vast amount of earthworks. We are not in the fortunate position of a large flat country like Australia that has a dozen different routes that can be used and the original route was more likely to stay closer to rivers. Essentially any major overhaul of a road or rail line in NZ will be very expensive and require massive earthworks or bridge/tunnel construction.
what is the legal basis for withholding so much information? what is the point of disclosure laws if such large parts of key reports are redacted before release? they might have got away with these tactics easily 15 years ago, but the game is surely up now. action from the Ombudsman please!
The legal basis is “free and frank” information to the Minister. In this case, though, I hope that Josh is going to go all Office of the Ombudsmen on their ass and challenge the extent of the redactions. That’s quite ridiculous, for a document that is not classified and should have nothing significantly sensitive from a commercial aspect. I do not consider discussions on the known geotechnical complexities of a given area to be covered by “free and frank”, though if they’re couched in terms of “This is a festering pile of poo, and you’re a moron for having dragged us this deeply into it by letting your mouth write cheques that taxpayers shouldn’t have to cash” I guess it could qualify.
Even the purpose of the board paper has been censored! I suspect that it is just politically embarrassing – I’m surprised they didn’t suppress the “Tactics” heading. Go to the Ombudsman Josh, its a straightforward process. 0800 802 602 http://www.ombudsmen.parliament.nz/
this is another useful website. http://www.ombudsmen.parliament.nz/index.php?Cid=100021&Aid=65645662
It calculates what date you should receive a response by, especially useful for the holiday period where it is difficult to figure out the final response date.
I asked Joyce for advice he had been given on the CBD rail link business case in early December, and today was the final date, so I am about to send a letter threatening the ombudsmen.
I’ll keep everyone in touch with what happens and what I find out.
I agree with Penfold about the cost of large scale road construction / re-construction in NZ due to bad geological conditions.
The Puford road is reminding me more and more of the massive 52km re-alignment of SH8 in Central Otago that was required when the Clyde Dam was built in the early ’80’s under the Muldoon Think Big programme. This road had many challenging issues with the local geology, especially the huge cuts and fills on unstable schist bedrock to achieve the desired 100km/h standard. It’s a nice (and empty) road to drive on, but is still probably the most expensive road project ever undertaken in NZ – $330 million in 1982 dollars. You could probably tack another zero on the end of the 1982 figure to build this road now in 2011. It went way over the original budget, and this one probably will too.
Damn that section of SH8 sure is a nice road, and now i know why, you get what you pay for. Always annoyed me how the police hung out on there, it was so smooth and safe lots of people speed. Meanwhile no one is policing the rest of SH8 where just going at the speed limit could be pushing things.