It’s been quite sad watching some of the recent exchanges in parliament.
The Minister of Transport Gerry Brownlee, and the Associate Minister Simon Bridges, have been swimming furiously against the arguments put forward by Julie Anne Genter from the Green Party. Julie has suggested that the RoNs programme is a poor way to spend billions of dollars, given that many of the RoNs are projected to deliver economic benefits that are less than their costs, i.e. NZ is likely to be poorer because of these projects. If one was interested in improving New Zealand’s economic performance, as National claim to be, then you’d think that they would avoid spending billions on projects that will make us poorer …
Recently, however, the National Government has tried a new strategy. They have argued that when considered as a “total package” the RoNs deliver a net economic benefit. Stated differently, if you add up all the benefits for all the individual RoNs, then you find that they exceed the costs: Ergo they are worthwhile investments.
Is the RoNs as a package line reasonable? Absolutely not, and here’s why:
- They have included the economic benefits associated with the Victoria Park Tunnel (VPT). The issue with this is that VPT is already built and its benefits will be realised irrespective of whether we build the other RoNs. So the benefits associated with VPT should not influence investment decisions on the other RoNs; they must instead stand (or more likely fall) on their own individual economic merits. What’s more, VPT has the largest net benefits of any of the RoNs – so once you remove it from the “package” then things start to look very flakey indeed. This is an absolutely blindingly obvious case of National cooking the books; and
- The highways themselves are spread far and wide across the country, such that their benefits are independent . Suggesting that the RoNs is a “package” implies that Puhoi-Wellsford and Transmission Gully are interdependent – that we can’t have one of the projects without the other, or at the very least that the benefits of one project depends on the other. I think most people can intuitively appreciate that the RoNs are individual projects that should be considered on their individual merits; they cannot and should not be lumped together.
So the “RoNs as a package line” fails because it a) counts the benefits of projects that have already been built and b) adds together benefits and costs for what are completely independent projects. What the National Government is doing is akin to taking New Zealand’s economic growth and adding it to Australia’s – and then subsequently concluding that NZ’s economy is growing fast. Instead, what National should instead be doing is analysing the economic merits of the RoNs individually and then funding the ones that deliver net economic benefits (and some of them do – at least when implemented in a staged and timely way).
Personally I’m amazed that the NZ media has not yet cottoned on to the economic smoke and mirrors being pumped out about the RoNs by the Government’s spin machine – we’re talking about $10 billion potentially being spent on highways that appear to have dubious economic merit. Let me say that number again: $10 billion – that’s some serious moolah. It’s hard not to conclude that the RoNs are looking increasingly like this National Government’s “think big,” i.e. large and expensive infrastructure projects that future generations will look back on and regret. I hope that I’m wrong; I hope that the RoNs are useful highway projects that generate widespread economic benefits. But you have to admit that this likelihood is slim; most of the evidence stacks up to the contrary.
Anyway, aside from peddling voodoo economics in order to justify the RoNs, the National Government has recently pulled out a new weapon in the war against Julie: Character assassination. This comprises of not-so-subtle efforts to discredit Julie’s credibility on transport issues. And that saddens me – not only because I know Julie personally and can attest to the fact that she is an extremely thoughtful and knowledgeable transport planner – but because it demonstrates that Brownlee and Co cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, a few of the RoNs are not a good investment. Very few of us are suggesting “drop them all”; we’re more suggesting that they should not be an absolute priority – that there are a range of other transport improvements that are more valuable.
I can’t work out whether its political interests or political pride that keeps the RoNs bandwagon rolling along – but either way I really hope someone in the mainsteam media starts asking harder questions of NZ’s self-anointed and omniscient “Roads Scholar.”
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Where did you find the picture of Gerry looking so slim?
I don’t really think Brownlee’s appearance is particularly relevant to the debate.
No, but do you get the feeling that part of Brownlee and Co’s disdain for Julie’s questions/suggestions stems from her appearance, i.e. she is a relatively young female? And that in their minds transport is a serious job for the boys? I may be wrong but there seems to be a whiff of chauvinist superiority in the tone of their answers – it’s less to do with what they say and more to do with how they say it.
But I may be reading too much into this, and also being a little protective of Julie at the same time …
You’re confusing appearance with social role. More than enough to argue on without that distraction.
But does not appearance indicate social role? I’m confused! But yes you’re right – it is a distraction.
Actually since a Transport Minister has oversight of a department which funds some (and not enough) programmes for active transport (walking and cycling) and the fact that he has demonstrated disdain for both walking and cycling, if not his size, than his attitude is of direct relevance to him carrying out his responsibilities properly. Plus in all honesty it is rather a more flattering photo of him of some I’ve seen.
Other than that, yeah I’m being rude, but then again it is a comment on a post which is mentioned his side of politics going for character assassination of their most effective opposition. So I’ll proudly say I think it was apt to make a fat joke.
Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know if roading projects have always been so expensive in the past – in terms of inflation adjusted dollars. They just seem mindbogglingly expensive compared to – for instance – the Government’s total yearly budget. Do other countries want to spend so much on infrastructure, or is my perception way off?
Interesting point – I believe that Waterview will be NZ’s most expensive transport project,at least in nominal terms. Would be interesting to inflation adjust some historical projects, e.g. Harbour Bridge, to see how relatively expensive they would be in today’s dollars.
But in general infrastructure is very expensive these days – both here and overseas. I know Amsterdam was constructing a new metro tunnel that cost about 5 billion Euro, from memory.
“Would be interesting to inflation adjust some historical projects, e.g. Harbour Bridge, to see how relatively expensive they would be in today’s dollars.”
A quick search gives an unreliable (blog) answer that the bridge cost $16million and the clipons another $13.5million. Compounding 5% over 40 years gives a cost of $207million. At 10% gives a cost of $1.3billion. Hard to say what rate should be used for inflation… It is low now, but was running along at close to 20% in the early 80s before Roger Douglas rescued us.
I think it is safe to say that the bridge would cost an awful lot more to build today, in real terms, than it did 40 years ago. However, 300,000 people were paying for it then and almost 1.5million would be paying for it now. And we’ve all being paid a lot more money. Wages have probably doubled in real terms in that time.
NZTA have the original bridge cost as £7,516,000, and the clip-ons a further $7.4m (same page). Using a starting date of 1954 Q1 for the bridge, then 1969 Q1 for the clip-ons, using the Reserve Bank’s inflation calculator I get $379,454,851.96 and $116,234,534.70, for a total cost of $495,689,386.66, or roughly $500m.
But what about the motorway approaches each side of the bridge? Does that include that – they’d have added a fair chunk too to those costs, albeit, as was pointed out before, much more cheaply than now as the land then was worth bugger all so you wouldn’t have had the need to purchase expensive land to put motorways on.
As an aside on the clipons, anyone know what the cost of building the original bridge with 8 lanes instead of 4 would have been? My gut feel way less than the $7.4m for the clipons in 1969.
And while were doing that what about the (expensive) remedial work needed on the clips ons in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s to keep them usable by trucks.
I wouldn’t consider that to be maintenance, more like “do minimum repairs”.
These projects normally include all the costs required to get them going, including the land acquisitions for the footings. Not sure how much of the approaches would have been included, but given that there was no existing motorway to attach to it’d be getting very hard to draw a bright line between building the road right up to the bridge and building the bridge itself.
Thanks for the link to the Inflation Calculator, Matt. That has all sorts of uses.
Anyone know the cost of the original Newmarket viaduct (6 lanes wide – 3 each way) and what it would be in todays $?
The replacement project cost is quoted regularly at some $230m in 2009? dollars.
Walkable, it might be a case of all the easy roading projects being done already. For example the Upper Harbour Motorway was about $280 million for 14km, a veritable bargain compared to other projects. That’s because it mostly ran across a clear corridor of flat farmland. But we don’t have any more corridors like that left, that was the last of the affordable motorways.
Now we are into a phase of trying to retrofit motorways/highways to established urban areas by tunneling or buying up houses or building big structures (VIc Park tunnel, Waterview tunnel, Basin Reserve flyover) or build them on nasty alignments with complex geotechnical conditions, routes that have been consistently passed over for decades as too hard to bother (Transmission Gully, the Holiday Highway).
It goes for other infrastructure too, the CRL is expensive because it’s tunnelled under a CBD, the sewer main upgrades are expensive because they’re being retrofitted to built out suburbia. However, I will point out it’s much cheaper to dig a two track rail tunnel and some stations than it is to dig a six lane motorway tunnel with interchanges. Now we’ve run out of easy wins it’s time to get more efficient and smarter with out spending, rather than just throwing increasingly huge amounts of money at the old paradigm.
Also very valid points.
Planning and consenting activity takes a lot longer these days than it used to. Planners consult a lot more with the public and that takes time and money. Environmental standards are a lot more rigorous. Worker safety standards are a lot higher. I think we have a tendency in general to go for a cheap bodge job when building infrastructure in NZ, but the construction standard of recent motorways is a lot higher than some old sections. I haven’t done the calculation, but I suspect that wages are probably double what they were in the 1950s, in real terms. And the cost of buying up land has probably gone up by the same factor.
Good points.
I think you’re significantly overestimating wage inflation. Again using RBNZ’s inflation calculator, and some figures I found about NZ’s history it appears that average weekly wage in 1956 was around £8.95 (£35 17s 6d is roughly £35.8, divided by four weeks), which comes in somewhere around $429.48 using CPI inflation.
Stats NZ has mean individual income from all sources for the June 2011 quarter (last available) as a shade over $700 (which, interestingly, is about in line with my guess based on the CPI figure from 1956 and the wage inflation figure from 1961 using the RBNZ calculator)
So, actually, wages have only increased by about 65% ahead of the CPI since around the time the AHB began construction. The land inflation, though, will be massively, massively higher. Herne Bay and St Mary’s Bay were almost slums at the time. They’re now amongst the most expensive suburbs in the country.
Also off topic, dont know if its been discussed else where but what are people thoughts on the basin flyover? I know its in Wellington but its still an interesting issue for me at least.
Expect a post on that project some time in the next few days.
On this subject, National Radio has a Insight documentary on the RoNS this Sunday morning after the 8am news,
You’ll also find it on the National Radio website for a week or so you can listen in,or listen again if you miss it.
So hopefully Stu maybe our National Broadcaster will ask the tough questions that need to be asked (and more to the point, answered) of the NZTA and Brownlee and maybe get some answers.
The recent change of tack in the linking of all RoNS together in a “have them all or have none” is a throw back to the original Think Big and echoes my comments the other day when I too picked up the change of (at)tack over the RoNS. The mantra back then in Think Big days was that you had to do them all or your wouldn’t get the benefits.
Mostly, then as now, this was done to let the Government of the day hide the turkeys inside the massive haybarn.
And as always, the Policitians played to opposition men, and not the issues.
But we all remember what happened in 1984 don’t we?
Heh, nice saying.
Yes Greg I hope you’re right. The National Government is having far too easy a ride on transport issues; hiding turkeys etc. Quite ironic timing with all the recent discussion on Tiwai Point and Manapouri :).
Stu,
Tiwai Point Smelter and Manapouri Power Station were not Think Big projects they predated Think Big by 15-20 years, but the economic thinking that encouraged Tiwai Point was the same that was used for justification of the Think Big projects. We got Clyde Dam from Think Big though.
The justification/discussion about Tiwai points future is a discussion for a different topic though that deserves a post, but probably not on this blog.
Thanks for correcting me there Greg – very good to know. Actually I have been talking a lot with people about Tiwai Point, in particular the transport implications were it to shut down, i.e. much cheaper electricity. That’s not at all to suggest that shutting it down is the way to go, but that it may be impact on our transport system were it to happen.
Stu,
Aluminium extraction and (also to some degree – smelting) is a very nasty business. it leaves behind, toxic, caustic waste like you wouldn’t believe – that East European toxic deluge a few years back was due to the breakage of the toxic waste storage pits from the local Aluminium industry.
As for NZ, well we don’t extract Aluminium, we only smelt the procesed raw material the smelter owners import from Australia and then re-export the resulting Aluminium with minimal actually benefit to the NZ Inc economy except for the jobs and related industries at Tiwai.
And Australia gets away with the extraction toxic waste as they have such a large area of un usable land to dump it in and leave it.
So while smelting is relatively less enviromentally damaging – for NZ as as a whole it means that we are essentially only exporting electricity in the form of a commodity product (Aluminium ingots).
Don’t get me wrong, the Tiwai Point Aluminium is very high quality Aluminium and can command a premium, but at the end of the day it is still a commodity product, subject to international prices and whims. Making Aluminum soaks up loads of Electricity – so unless you have a cheap power price for the electricity (or subsidised power as the Chinese apparently do) you can’t afford to do it.
The only reason we have a smelter at Tiwai Point is because of Manapouri and the only reason we built Manapouri was for Tiwai Point.
Manapouri is probably as close to an ideal Hydro Electric plant as you can think of – in NZ anyway – tucked away in a far corner of NZ, with plenty of (daily) rain to keep the lakes full and an all year round generation capability as a result, coupled with a large height difference between lake and power plant to get maximum generation of power from the water.
All of which is why the electric power from it could be used for such a low cost commodity product like Aluminium.
So the question has been raised with the recent rumblings around the sell off the smelters in this part of the world by Rio Tinto what to do with Tiwai Point, and by implication Manapouri’s power if its not be used so cheaply at Tiwai? Meridian is keeping quiet about it all, not least as its due for Mixed Model Ownership soon and this is a major uncertainty over that and this its true value.
But lets assume that Tiwai is closed, what then for Manapouri and NZ Inc?
Well for a start, it would have to hooked up fully to the National Grid fully and then the power would have to come north from near Bluff all the way to the major users over the National Grid.
Probably not a major issue and certainly relatively inexpensive to do that hook up to the Grid.
Whether the existing Cook Straight cables could carry all of Manapouri capacity out of the South Island is something I don’t know, I know that Transpower was upgrading the Cook Straight cables at some point, and it could be that until thats done (or redone, if they didn’t plan it right the first time), then it may not have a short term impact
For Meridian Energy that owns Manapouri, to be honest they’d have a major long term asset freed of longer term contracts, so they could probably double their return on the power prices they currently sell to Tiwai. And remember this is a base load generation plant, it run can flat out all year around, churning out power at relatively low cost – lower cost than most other power plants in NZ – and the more it rains in the Hills around Manapouri lake, the better.
For other Generators, especially those stuck with more expensive thermal based generation, well that would mean near instant demise economically speaking, so Huntly (for example) would be “gone by lunchtime” – except as a “peaking plant” or voltage support for Auckland and North Auckland loads.
Will it make your or my power bill any cheaper – not a lot – those prices are determined by a combination of long term power prices and short term spot prices, and with such an overcapacity of power supply (several years, possibly a decade or more of future demand at least), then no further investment in any power generation would be economic to undertake by any generator.
So it may have a reverse effect – kill off many other “green” power generation technologies before they get a look in. It would probably kill off Solid Energy’s Coal to Whatever plans along the way too.
So, what would this do for Transport? Well in the short to medium term not a lot that I can see.
If we had lots of electric cars using Aluminium/Air batteries, which could be “recharged” using that electricity then that power would be a real instant boon.
But we don’t nor is there any prospect of such batteries/cars anytime soon.
So, what should be done?
Well heres an idea – perhaps the government could show some leadership here, and use Meridian as a “pilot” and get them to look at using this to create a Hydrogen based economy, by electrolysis of water using cheapish Manapouri power. It wouldn’t be cost effective to build a new plant to do it – but repurposing a “spare” power plant to kick start some of your transport infrastructure into a Hydrogen based one – that might just work.
And if it did, then think of the long term – freed of the need for more and more fossil fuel imports and also not simply selling off the power as commodity alumium in a oversupplied world market, then we might be able to become leaders in Greener transport, Won’t eliminate the need to import fossil fuels like Diesel as Iceland found you can’t replace Diesel powered engines with Hydrogen powered ones as easily as petrol powered ones.
Hey Greg I note that on the Manapouri Wiki page it says that the Station is already connected to the National Grid:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manapouri_Hydroelectric_Power_Station
Also note with interest the Kawarau is now also reducing a significant demand for electrons too and that Solid Energy has fallen off the big privatisation list…. Hey-Ho whatever next?
Time for the gov to redirect the RoNS billions to electrify the whole rail system and move freight off the roads and onto to rails to shaw up electricity demand and save its privatisation programme!
In my dreams.
Tiwai Point was expanded as part of Think BIg.
You are correct,
I had forgotten that point, but Manapouri was also expanded with a second tail race tunnel to allow the original generation levels to be reached.
So the net outcome was that Tiwai still used the power from Manapouri with limited recourse to the National Grid.
Electricity is one of the few things in NZ that can’t be exported directly and therefore it’s local price is not set by the price an exporter can get for it.
One way to make electricity an export is to convert it to aluminum (it has been referred to as ‘solid electricity’) and export it that way. The other is to just sell the generating companies and export their profits.
As an indication of how cheaply NZ is selling the output of Manapouri powerstation can be seen here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10605697 and how we would probably be better off without Tiwai point smelter.
National Radio ‘Insight’ programme was disappointing. Didn’t get into much depth about the issues, and lots of uncritical air time for fans of the RoNS whose impartiality as commentators is questionable. Much better if they had included some more disinterested third parties – overseas experts and such – and considered issues like changing patterns of transport globally. An A+ for choice of topic, but no better than a C+ for actual ‘insight’
Agree,
Too much on the he says, she says stuff or “woe is us we’ll lose our house/neighbourhood/community to the nasty motorway”, not enough time spent on the underlying assumptions the RoNS are based on
Could have produced that documentary from reading this blog and Hansard to be honest. You can do Better Radio NZ, much much better.
Got some interesting things I got from it though:
1. Brownlee says no more than 29% of NZTA funds go on RoNS, and 26% on local roads (and pray tell where does the other 40 odd percent go)?
2. Council For Infrastructure development (CID) says they want the PuFord RoNS paid by the regional network charge on Auckland road users and a toll
3. Julie Ann Genter thinks that the reduction in the Wellington RoNS at the north end is presaging an entire RoNS scale back – wishful thinking perhaps
4. PPPs now being talked about openly for RoNS as is the linking of all the RoNS as a “bundle” not on a one by one basis
But no real consideration from it about stagnant traffic volumes and the opportunity costs involved with such high levels of spending on concrete monstrosities.
There was some discussion for the Wellington RoNS about putting a local road solution for half the price of the RoNS, but nothing was actually discussed further on that.
Also, I see that VPT is now considered by National as a RoNS but wasn’t that committed to/funded by Labour before National came along as was Waterview?
Same with Newmarket Viaduct replacement and CMJ improvements – all put in place before National come to power.
Very very disappointed. List the interviewees:
1. The Minister, no hard questions
2. NZCID
3. RTF
4. Camber of commerce
5. AA
All singing from the same songsheet and all with skin in the game, again no hard questions
Versus two opposition MPs who can be dismissed as opposing it for political reasons and an old couple who will be adversely affected by a project, so not an argument against the programme.
Well I guess the campaign to neuter National Radio and render them from a position of neutrality to one of softly presenting the gov and their supporters case has worked.
How much money has the government earmarked for Christchurch rebuild? I find it extraordinary how easy a ride these projects are getting considering how marginal most of them appear to be, and also the penny-pinching going on in other areas – drug-testing for beneficiaries to save 14M (or only 7M depending on who you listen to), putting up class sizes to save 40 odd million, although they backed away from that one, and of course the elephant in the room politically, asset sales to raise noone is sure quite how much, so that we can build roads, it seems. Don’t misunderstand me. I am sure that in the current economic climate the government should be running deficits, it’s just that these projects seem huge and aren’t being questioned (much).
According to the Ministry of Health, drug testing of beneficiaries could end up costing $14m, making it, at best, a break-even proposition. Not that Pull-ya Benefit cares about the actual economics, though, which is good because she’d be a pariah in the National Caucus if she started worrying about policies really delivering their supposed economic benefits.
David this is one of the most extraordinary features of this whole situation: The blatant hypocrisy of it… there’s way more being gambled on the RoNS than can be gained through the asset sales programme; which of course is both looking more and more like a fire sale in this economic climate and A VERY BAD IDEA even if you accept the bogus arguments put forward to support it. But then both programmes are quite similar in that they are both revenue negative even before any risk is priced into them.
As Cam commented earlier where is the risk factor on these marginal to negative BCRs?…. everything has to chug along exactly as it has in the past for decades to come for these road investments to get close to delivering a return. Yet there are way more signs that this century is looking very different to the last one in many areas: For example: There must never be another Middle East crisis, say like Israel bombing Iran, any global moves to price carbon, or even the slightest chance of the 97% of oil that we import becoming much more expensive than it is now. And currently we have a very high dollar and a global recession/depression keeping a lid on that volatile input.
The RoNS are a huge and imprudent gamble with money that is urgently needed elsewhere- well so this government constantly tells us. And the whole thing makes a complete mockery of the idea that these people are the ‘Party of fiscal responsibility’. No precautionary principle at work anywhere. Just rash plans, unbending and clumsily defended.
The haste to pre-spend this tax income on roads and urgently sell down income earning assets into a depressed market is looking more and more like nothing other than a determination to impoverish future New Zealand governments while transferring this wealth to the benefit of particular groups; those already with capital to invest and the road transport sector. A big fat raid on the nations collective wealth in broad daylight masked by a man who is ‘pretty relaxed’.
An idea came to mind with the Associate Minister of Transport coming from Tauranga – home of the publicly listed Port of Tauranga. Might go do some research into how much freight is moved by rail to and from the Port of Tauranga especially those log trains and Metro Port Trains from Auckland to Tauranga compared to trucks on the road. What I am getting at is if this Government of Turkeys is so anti-rail what would happen to Simon Bridges electorate if we were to rip the rail out of Tauranga and just have those trucks going to and from the Port of Tauranga pounding the highways and local roads – which often annoy residents anyway.
We might find that the the Port decides to cull jobs and operations due to a lack of a mass mover of freight (rail). And it is also a moot point that the Metro Port Train services were flat out during the Port of Auckland strike as they were basically the only means to move the high amount of increased freight from Tauranga to Auckland.
We might find Bridges a bit sensitive to all of this and he might just have a moment and realise how important rail actually is – especially to his electorate.
Gerry might be a Roads Scholar – but he is a few beers short of 24 pack (about 23 bottles short) when it actually comes to an integrated rail and road system moving the freight. I hate to see Simon Bridges get turfed out of Tauranga 😉 because the Roads Scholar screwed over Port of Tauranga with his anti-rail mindset (remember Kiwi Rail have no money for their turn around plan which means no investment into more freight movements by rail to Port of Tauranga)
The other aspect in relation to the RoNS is the proximity to land for further sprawl. As an example, in the case of Tauranga there is a 148 hectare industrial site developers want to build on to create Metroplex Rangiuru, which so happens to have a large interchange designated by the new Eastern Link. Of course there is no provision for rail access, even though the rail line would be relatively easily extended to the site and create a quick link to the Port. Property developers hold the keys you might find.
Tauranga has got to be a poster child for how not to do urban development and transport planning. The spending on transport there over the past 20 years is incredible, yet there is still nasty congestion. Plus a lot of sprawl which has either happened in hodge-podge manner, or hasn’t happened as expected.
It’s just a disaster.
Hmm,
Sounds like a good topic for a future post then – how not to do Another Tauranga?
I think that criticism is unfair – to really get indepth in 25-30 minutes for a topic of that magnitude is impossible. The doco wasn’t just for transport geeks either, we must remember that. You have to cover what could be considered old ground so everyone else who is not familiar with the issue can get up to speed. There were just as many people who were critical as those who were supportive – which is what you have to have in a balanced story. I would be disappointed if it was 30 minutes of criticism or 30 minutes of praise.
I think that criticism is unfair – to really get indepth in 25-30 minutes for a topic of that magnitude is impossible. The doco wasn’t just for transport geeks either, we must remember that. You have to cover what could be considered old ground so everyone else who is not familiar with the issue can get up to speed. There were just as many people who were critical as those who were supportive – which is what you have to have in a balanced story. I would be disappointed if it was 30 minutes of criticism or 30 minutes of praise.
..
Hmm … I did not hear the segment but just wanted to I disagree with the inference that “critical insight” is gained by simply giving air-time to people who sit on both sides of an issue. Instead, I feel that critical insight is gained from the journalist getting between people on both sides of the argument and asking questions that get them to reflect more deeply on the arguments of the other side (as opposed to putting forward their own individual perspectives).
That kind of investigative journalism challenges people’s core assumptions/statements. So when Brownlee says something like “the RoNs will deliver economic benefits” the reporter should be asking back “what evidence do you have that the RoNs deliver economic benefits when NZTA’s own reports suggest over half cost more than the benefits they deliver?” Or similarly “how do you measure economic benefits? Is not a benefit cost ratio our chosen measure of economic benefits? Such that if the benefit cost ratio is low then the project is considered to have low benefits relative to its costs? If this is true then on what evidence can you claim that the RoNs deliver economic benefits?”
It’s that kind of self-reflective questions that journalists should ask, and the same goes for the RoNs opponents. But again I’m speculating here because I did not listen to the programme …
P.s. And if Patrick’s list of participants is accurate then it seems very skewed in favour of the RoNs indeed. And that the opposition seems to fall into either the “vested political” and/or “local parochial” categories. That’s very unfortunate – because the primary criticism of the RoNs advanced on this blog is their relative lac of merit as transport projects.
So what the segment should have done is lined up transport planners and/or economists on the other side. In fact, I don’t think I’m being too presumptuous when I suggest that if you were to conduct an anonymous poll of transport planners and economists in New Zealand, then you would find that the majority believe the RoNs to be an ineffective use of money. The poll would have to be anonymous because so many people in the industry are afraid to speak out …
Such a poll would be quite easy to organise – although self-selection bias would be hard to manage.
I agree, Greg N your comments were harsh and unbalanced – the programme said it would look at the how the roads had develop and how NZ would pay for them, that was all there.
It was billed as a lot more than that, such as looking at was this a good use of transport funds at the time of Economic uncertainty.
No discussion on that point was held.
Secondly as Conan pointed out, not one person on that documentary was uninvolved with the RoNS in someway.
What is needed is a good look at the underlying assumptions the RoNS are based on, including expert commentary from roading/transport experts, not just the vested lobby groups like CID, or NZTA (tasked with implementing this policy)..
As was pointed out in this documentary this is a intergenerational development, so we need a long term view and good context to hang things on not a “this is a disaster”/this is a good thing which is what we in essence got..
As we didn’t get good analysis though and thats why I gave it a tough review.
The guys from the Motu research institute are not involved with the RoNS, are they? There was also the Generation Zero out fit, Save Kapiti and Smart Transport Network opposing it.
Remember all those interviews were done face to face – do you think Radio New Zealand has thousands to burn on international travel? Lets get real. Those guys are under tremendous financial pressure. I used to work there, so I know.
Sure, you could have spent 30 minutes on one topic like BCR’s etc but the documentary wasn’t billed as that. It was a broad brush look at the RoNS – 27 minutes flys by. Some of the economic stuff has also been done to death and was more 2010 fodder.
Another point that should be considered is you can’t do a piece like this without having both sides. You may not want to listen to the opinions of RTF, AA et al but they have a right to have their say as well. A documentary like that would never get to air if it just fronted one side.
What did the Motu guys say? And as for international travel, what’s wrong with Skype?
See me comment above – nothing wrong with having both sides presented but the real journalistic input comes from asking them challenging questions. Otherwise it’s just an opportunity for each side to spout their lines … which happens too much already (hence the need for this blog post).
Bex,
I’m a National Radio listener, listen to it everyday, think they do a fantastic job (usually) for the paltry money they get.
BUT – and its a big BUT – when I compare todays Insight with other Insight documentaries and with other “analysis in depth” programs Radio NZ do weekly as well – such as say Focus on Politics,
With the latter, I see a depth of knowledge and tough and insightful questions and issues being raised (even if not answered) each week over the same time allowance.
We didn’t see that kind of Radio NZ trademark journalism on this documentary.
I Understand the financial pressures, but as Stu pointed out thats no excuse for a once around the usual suspects for some quick sound bites.
The fact that Brownlee wouldn’t take part until after the documentary was finished should have been mentioned in the documentary as well to give us the “flavour” of the Governments perspective on the RoNS and discussion of it.
It also seemed to me that the program was Wellington focussed,
When the documentary clearly pointed out the two most expensive RoNS are Waterview and PuFord.
So why did we spend 20+ minutes on the Wellington RoNS and ignored the most contentious RoNS of the lot – PuFord? The one with the lowest BCR (and pure fantasy WEBs),
Also where was the contrasting of the position of the transport agencies, hangers on and the Government on the way they discuss the RoNS versus the largest transport project ever – the CRL?
Could it be the journalist who did the documentary was Wellington based and took the easy route of doing it as a local Wellington story?
Insight is supposed to give the listeners Insight into the issues behind the news. This documentary didn’t.
From memory, Motu guy basically said BCRs can be deceptive and shouldn’t be the main factor for determing a road. Quality wise, Skype audio doesn’t make the grade. There’s more going on than meets the eye, I know for a fact Brownlee only agreed to take part after the doco was finished – didn’t think it was a good use of his time.
Hold on hold on. What the Motu guy said was not unreasonable (in general), but again the question back from the journalist should be: “But when you’re pushing for a road based on its supposed economic merits, should we not expect that the BCR is relatively good?” Or “but is that not a case for improving the methodology through which we calculate BCRs? Rather than circumventing it by handpicking projects?”
Re: Skype comment – c’mon bex be realistic here, people call into studios all the time, even on National Radio. With regard to Brownlee only agreeing to take part later, not sure how that’s relevant?
As a fellow female transport planner I can attest to the fact that in nz the boys don’t expect young professional women in transport and it was suggested as an issue to me by older males in the sector! I was gob smacked but at least some male professionals understand how some of their fellow professionals treat/ view women in the sector.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could find a project say done thing that for goods to market 7 days faster? Now I wonder if such a project exists in nz?
David O
August 18, 2012 at 1:07 pm · Reply
“How much money has the government earmarked for Christchurch rebuild?”
The Government has earmarked $5.5bn for the rebuild. It will collect $4.5bn GST on the rebuild so its nett contribution is $1bn which, per taxpayer, is one-fifth of the Japanese government’s Tsunami rebuild contribution ($400 vs $1900). The City Councils rebuild contribution per ratepayer is 25 times more than in Japan ($11000 vs $$500). This is a Government whose response to the most expensive per capita disaster in the history of the OECD has been to put the interests of shareholders in foreign insurance companies ahead of the interests of its own citizens. If you understand what economists mean by “dead cat bounce” you will understand why the economic rebound stats for Canterbury are actually alarming rather than comforting.