Looking closer at “Operation Lifesaver”

Labour’s announcement on the weekend that they would provide $1.2 billion to help construct the City Rail Link was credible because they have a source for the funding: redirecting the money from the Puhoi-Wellsford project which is often termed the “holiday highway”. The January 2010 project summary statement noted the following ‘forecast outturn cost’ for the Puhoi-Wellsford road:

The final costs of the RoNS corridor will include future years escalation (normally three percent) due to increases in input costs largely following national economic inflationary pressures. The actual amount of escalation attributed to individual projects depends on the time frame for the construction. If a project is constructed earlier than predicted then the amount of escalation would be lower. Equally if construction is later than predicted the cost of escalation would be higher. However, at a RoNS corridor level the individual project effects are less marked. Thus the forecast outturn cost of the RoNS corridor would be $1.69 billion with a confidence range of $1.53 billion to $2.04 billion.

So our best cost-estimate for the project is around $1.7 billion, meaning that Labour’s policy of redirecting $1.2 billion onto the City Rail Link is not only easily possible, but also leaves around $500 million to spare. Usefully, a key part of the announcement on the weekend effectively picks up on a piece of work that I did along with the Campaign for Better Transport back in 2010 – to come up with a more cost-effective alternative to the “holiday highway”: something we called Operation Lifesaver.

Operation Lifesaver was initially presented to the Transport and Urban Development committee of the former Auckland Regional Council, to help inform their submission on the Puhoi-Wellsford project. It was generally fairly well received, particularly the focus on safety. You can read the whole document here. The summary is outlined below: As you might be able to guess by its name, the purpose of “Operation Lifesaver” was not just to find a cheaper solution to the full Puhoi-Wellsford motorway, but to come up with some safety improvements in particular that could be implemented a heck of a lot faster than constructing the full motorway. This is because the current road is extremely dangerous – this slide comes from our presentation to the ARC (figures from the NZTA business case document): With the Puhoi-Warkworth section not due for completion until 2019 and the Warkworth-Wellsford section until 2022 (likely to be even later now due to geotechnical difficulties) we worked out that around 50 more people would die, based on trends since 2000, before the full motorway was opened. That was a pretty shocking number and drove a lot of the thought behind trying to come up with a solution that could be implemented a lot sooner than the full-blown motorway.

With a lot of helpful input from an NZTA Official Information Act response, we put together two options for more immediate upgrades to state highway one between Puhoi and Wellsford: largely safety improvements as well as a Warkworth bypass. 

Of course we are not transport economists or engineers so there was a bit of guess work in the assessment of costs and the assessment of cost-effectiveness, but this was done fairly conservatively on a “what proportion of the full project’s safety/time-savings/vehicle costs etc. benefit are we likely to get from this” approach. It would be interesting to get a bit more expert analysis of the idea – particularly now that Labour have effectively committed $320 million to State Highway 1 between Puhoi and Wellsford. I suspect that what we could get for that price might fall somewhere between the two proposals, as things are always a bit more expensive than you thought.

It’s important to keep in mind, when looking at policies to “abandon the holiday highway” and “do Operation Lifesaver instead”, that Operation Lifesaver is a fairly extensive proposal – particularly if you have $320 million to play with. Many of the congestion issues faced by this road are caused by Warkworth and would be solved by a bypass. Many of the safety issues could also be fixed much more quickly and efficiently if we don’t have to wait 10-20 years for the full motorway to go through.

One argument made for the Puhoi-Wellsford road is its ability to help Northland’s economy – perhaps in a way that Operation Lifesaver can’t (if we set aside the relative costs of the options for now). While I can’t really see how savings 7-10 minutes off a trip between two Auckland towns will revolutionise Northland’s economy (and a Warkworth bypass would generate much of this time saving anyway), I think the last word on the issue of economic development should go to a 2008 report commissioned by NZTA into the upgrade (just before it was nominated as a RoNS): In short, while there would be some economic effect, it would be pretty minor. Certainly not worth spending $1.7 billion on when there are better alternatives around.

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