I’ve been relatively complimentary to NZTA in the past few days: of their realisation that funding rail has big benefits and their somewhat positive noises about the CBD Rail Tunnel project. But another of their recent board papers (passed on to me courtesy of regular commenter rtc) indicates that part of the organisation is certainly still stuck in the 1960s with their thinking.

The board paper, prepared by Transport Planning Manager Neil Cree, provides a bit more information behind the announcement last year that around $160 million was planned to be further allocated to motorway widening projects of State Highway 1 throughout Auckland: at either end of where the Western Ring Route “hooks into” the northern and southern motorways. It seems likely that this is a response to the chaos that occurred when the Manukau Connection motorway was opened late last year.

Here’s a summary of what the board paper says about the “need” for further spending on motorway widening around each end of the Western Ring Route:
The phrase ‘completing the state highway network’ is starting to sound a bit hollow in my opinion. When will the network ever actually be ‘complete’ to a level acceptable by NZTA? They seem to be sticking on more and more projects, all supposedly critical for ‘completing’ the network.

A lot of the supposedly necessary additions to the state highway network appear to be a knee-jerk reaction to the problems that occurred when the Manukau Connection was opened. This is elaborated upon later in the document: A fairly detailed (and expensive) set of improvements have been proposed to supposedly “fix” this problem (or more realistically, just shift the congestion somewhere else on the network):
Stage one alone has an estimated cost of around $40-80 million.

At I noted earlier, further upgrades to the northern end of the Western Ring Route are also proposed. The price tags for some of the possible projects are pretty eye-popping:
I can recognise the potential need for widening SH1 between Constellation Drive and Greville Road to three lanes each way – one would imagine this could be done as part of extending the Northern Busway to Albany. Stage 2, the really expensive stage, seems rather unnecessary at first glance though – basically spending half a billion dollars to make the map of Auckland’s motorway system look a bit prettier as ‘everything would link up’. I struggle to believe that the motorway-to-motorway connection would generate $1.5 billion of economic benefits (I suspect its BCR is largely dependent on phantom time-savings benefits).

The map below shows more detail on the proposed upgrades: Oddly enough, even after proposing to spend well over a billion further dollars on more motorways, NZTA still admit that this won’t solve the congestion problem: Of course the solution is not to think logically and recognise that you can never build your way out of congestion, but instead to continue the 1960s mindset and propose even more motorways that are supposedly ‘necessary’: A further map included in the board paper suggests that NZTA foresee a great number of additional motorway/expressway projects in the future – including ones that haven’t ever really shown up before – like a Karaka-Weymouth connection and a return of part of the Eastern Motorway (that seemed to have previously been banished from AMETI). This map is actually quite scary:
Unless NZTA are building a “secret bridge” between Karaka and Weymouth, I presume the notation of that project as “current works” is incorrect. The Mill Road corridor, which seems to be the yellow line to the east of State Highway 1, is also a long way from being a “current work”.

It’s time NZTA woke up to realise that it’s not the 1960s anymore. Petrol prices have just hit $2.08 a litre, every motorway project we embark upon only proves that you can’t build your way out of congestion, the Auckland Council is focusing its efforts on improving public transport. Surely NZTA can drag themselves into the 21st century and abandon their motorways addiction. “One more project… just one more project and we’ll fix congestion” has surely been proven to be a complete failure?

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20 comments

  1. That “East Tamaki Arterial” is in addition to AMETI – the crossing is to the south.

    What a strange board paper, I guess this part of NZTA needs to dream up stupid motorway projects to keep themselves employed?

  2. I think a large part of the problem is the whole road building industry, we now have half a dozen large companies that make a lot of money off designing and building roads and most of them are based in Auckland. If the motorway network was completed there would be much less for them to do and they would then complain about how the council/government were making people unemployed. This means they need to keep dreaming up expensive projects like the Onehunga ‘rung’ which is projected could cost more than $1b alone yet isn’t likely to deliver any real benefits above a simple upgrade of a few local roads.

    Companies like Fletcher’s would love that Karaka – Weymouth bridge as that would open up a lot of new areas they could carve up to also build houses on.

    1. Hey there are plenty of potential rail projects out there. Implementing my 2030 rail map would keep them in business for quite a long time.

      1. The problem is that they have probably invested in a lot of machinery and specialists and want to get a return on their investment. It is much easier for them to keep doing what they have always done rather than try something different. Also each of those lines on your 2030 map are large multi billion $ projects which means even if we changed the focus of our spending they will only come up every few years at best.

  3. Time to reclaim the motorways and run trains straight down the motorway lanes, Perth-style. The grade separation and gradients of motorways can be capitalised on as Fair Game for Public Transport re-purposing now, and this “pre-preparation” should also lower construction costs too. Take away a lane or two and you can have a busway.

    NZTA might build as many motorways as they want- but any motorways they do build probably could all be looked at for public transport conversion and reclamation.

  4. This is actually getting farcical if you didn’t know they were serious you’d laugh. I just can’t belive with petrol at $2.10 and Auckland’s roads choking themselves to death that they actually think this is the way forward. I’m now convinced more than ever that the pro motorway brigade are like religous fanatics, reason and logic don’t matter they press on based on blind faith.

    1. Hey, come to Brisbane!

      We had our Clem 7 road tunnel just go bust financially after everybody said that it would go bust from day 1 and told the politicians multiple times that it would go bust… so now that it has gone bust, what do they do– accelerate the tunnel constructions and road building projects and put the costs now on to the public accounts!

      $770 million of public money was blown up on that. Oh well “next time will be different”.

      “Flee Clem7 tunnel turmoil, investors told”
      http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/flee-clem7-tunnel-turmoil-investors-told-20100901-14ndf.html

  5. Isn’t it funny Cam, and we are the ones labelled ideologues with “pie in the sky” dreams of wasting money…

  6. That SH1/18 proposal seems fantastically expensive (up to $680 mill!?) for the scope of the works – basically adding one lane to each size of SH1 for about 3-4km and two ramps from SH18 east to SH1 north. If anything it goes to show the lack of forward planning from Transit and the local councils of day as this area and highway network has only been built up relatively recently – I’d say much of the high cost is to deal with issues around access to the expressway section of SH18 just west of SH1. Still, it is amazingly pricey for what it is.

    The SH16 port stage 3 proposals probably won’t be looked at until the second harbour crossing is built, as this area / motorway is still an outside consideration for the southern tunnel portals.

    The Karaka-Weymouth connection was pushed pretty hard by the Manukau City Council a while back – though as a Penlink style standard 2 lane local road that would be owned by the Council – not a state highway. It would be interesting to see how the Auckland council would now views this proposal.

    1. I live in Weymouth and the proposed bridge would destroy our seaside village lifestyle and turn Weymouth Road into just another motorway corridor. Not to mention the housing which will need to be demolished at the end of Lawsons way to make the bridge entrance wide enough. It will be another Ti irirangi drive and the traffic volume will be terrible as all the residents from the karaka and drury side will use it instead of the southern motorway..
      Our proerty values will drop through the floor, but maybe that is what the council wants so they can grab up the land at a cheap rate..
      There is no forseeable benefit to Weymouth at all, and this bridge will only benefit Karaka..

  7. The root cause of this issue is the National Government’s policy statement diverting all transport funds into roads. Congestion and transport is a huge problem in Auckland, because we have had a roads-only focus for 6 decades, but if the NZTA are only allowed to build more roads with the money the government takes off us what other option do they have?

    The current government’s policy for transport funding is one of the most crippling and backwards-looking arrangements we have in New Zealand today. It is eliminating any chance of efficiency and choice in our transport network, worsening our dire global ranking in terms of transport spending. Future generations will look back in disbelief at how short-sighted Mr Joyce and company were.

      1. Busways would come under “Public Transport Infrastructure” rather than the state highway fund – I think. An exception might be an extension to the Northern Busway, which could potentially be funded out of motorway improvements if it was next to the motorway.

        I believe that’s how the existing part of the Northern Busway managed to find funding.

  8. The statement by Rodin5 that Manukau City Council was pushing pretty hard for the Karaka-Weymouth connection is incorrect. Franklin District Council was keen on the link. Manukau City Council was actually very concern with the proposal because of the impact on the Weymouth community and the pressure it would create for urbanising the southern shoreline of the Manukau Harbour.

  9. To be fair, a large part of NZTA’s staff (as i understand it) come from Transit which was, basically, an agency set up to plan, advocate for and build motorways. So it’s not really surprising they would find it hard to shift away from motorway based development.

    Maybe the “secret bridge” is to go with the “secret airport” 🙂

  10. I’ve just been reading through some of the NZTA reports. I note in the “Sector Directions Update” report (“to provide the Board with an oversight of changing government policies relevant to the NZ Transport Agency”) the following comment:

    “The NZTA is directly involved throughout the development process, and as such we do not anticipate that there will be any surprises for the NZTA in the development of the next GPS.”

    What I find worrying, is that this report was delivered to the board at the same time as the 1960’s motorway vision. Assuming their left hand does indeed know what the right is up to, the next GPS might divert even more funds into state highways and reduce further any development of public transport.

    The NZTA must have a lot of info besides what is put in these highly-redacted board summaries — it would be interesting to get hold of more of the detail.

    1. There’s huge worry among some of the people I know who are working ‘on the side of good’ in various transport agencies that the next GPS will be an even more extreme roadsfest than the last one.

      1. It is completely out of step with every other developed country; NZ has become a haven for backwards transport policy makers as well as distinct fauna and bird life…

        I find it quite ironic that the NZTA decided to enclose in their report on the CBD rail tunnel the entire NZ Herald editorial “If we really want it, we’ll have to pay”. I guess we’re not given that option on things they’re building that we don’t want.

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