Yesterday the NZTA released the documents they are using to apply for consent for the Puhoi to Warkworth motorway. Here is the press release:
The NZ Transport Agency says details of its application and supporting documents to construct the Pūhoi to Warkworth section of the Ara Tūhono – Pūhoi to Wellsford Road of National Significance are now available on-line at www.nzta.govt.nz/puhoi-to-warkworth-application
Their publication follows formal acceptance of the application and documents by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA).
The Transport Agency’s Highways Manager, Tommy Parker, encourages people to review the documents online.
“Although the public submission process has not yet begun – we anticipate that will happen around November – in the interests of transparency and our commitment to keeping the community fully informed, we’ve made this information available as soon as possible for people to review,” Mr Parker says.
The EPA will now make recommendations to the Ministers of Conservation and the Environment relating to the national significance of the project and the appropriate consenting process to consider the Transport Agency’s application. It could be considered by a Board of Inquiry, the Environment Court or be referred to Auckland Council.
The Pūhoi to Warkworth section of the RoNS starts at the Johnstones Hill tunnels at the north end of the Northern Gateway Toll Road on State Highway 1. The new highway will be four-laned and will be 18.5 kilometres long.
There are a huge amount of documents to go through and I have only just scratched the surface but already there are a few things that have caught my attention.
The executive summary suggests the key benefits of the project include:
- improving route security and resilience of the State highway network north of Auckland through reducing the reliance on a single route (current SH1)
- improving safety compared to the existing SH1 between Puhoi and Warkworth
- reduced travel times and improved travel time reliability along the State highway network north of Auckland
- improving the movement of people and freight between Auckland and Northland, by avoiding existing congestion points and slow sections constraining the operation of SH1 (eg Schedewys Hill, Pohuehue Viaduct, Hill St intersection)
- increasing the potential for economic and social development as a result of travel time savings, improved trip time reliability and improved interregional accessibility between Auckland, north Auckland and Northland;
- improving accessibility across many parts of the region’s road network; and
- supporting the intentions of the Auckland Plan that Warkworth grow and develop as a satellite town within the Auckland region
I have no problem with the benefits being listed but most of those could be obtained in numerous different ways. What is important to know is if the benefits outweigh the costs – something that the not one of the numerous documents seem to talk about. Further it is almost comical that the NZTA use the Auckland Plan as justification for the project. The council proposed to open up so much land around Warkworth in part due to the government saying they were going to build the motorway. Yet now as a result of that the NZTA are turning around and using the potential development as justification for the project in the first place. This is expanded upon within the justification section.
Also in the justification section is this chart of how the project has developed and once again highlights how backwards the whole process has been with key investigations only taking place after the government says they are going to build the road.
The text goes on to say about how they are proposing a four lane road because that is what the network plan suggests they should do. The network plan however says that there needs to be a four lane road partly because that is what would meet the strategic objectives in the Government Policy Statement (GPD) and of course the GPS states that the NZTA have to build a road from Puhoi to Warkworth to RoNS standard (which is at least a four lane motorway/expressway). In short they are building a completely offline motorway because the government told them they had to and they have written subsequent reports to try and justify that position.
Back to the executive summary, some of the most interesting parts of the document come from the projects description and it highlights how truly massive the impacts on the local environment are going to be.
Consistent with the RoNS standards, the indicative alignment has been designed to motorway standard comprising four lanes with a continuous median separation and a design speed of 100 – 110 km/h. The indicative alignment and design incorporates grade-separated crossings of local roads to maintain connectivity in the local road network.
The indicative alignment will require numerous cut slopes and fill embankments as it passes through the hilly country between Puhoi and Warkworth. The highest embankments are situated in the Moirs Hill sector of the Project and attain a height of approximately 46.5m above ground level. The deepest cuttings are also situated in the Moirs Hill sector at a depth of approximately 45.8m below ground level.
A range of common construction measures is available to stabilise and manage these slopes. The final form and treatment of finished cut slopes and embankments will be developed during detailed design.
The Project will involve the construction of 7 major viaducts and 5 bridges. These will extend across significant watercourses, including the Okahu Creek, Puhoi river, Hikauae Creek and the major branches of the Mahurangi river and major gullies. They will also serve to maintain local road access, provide farm access and flood relief. The highest viaduct is situated in the Perry road sector and will attain a height of approximately 46.0m above ground level. Other viaducts of significant height are situated adjacent to Puhoi road (approx 27.4m) and in the Schedewys Hill sector (approx. 42.6m).
The Project proposes culverts for the crossing of a number of streams, many of which are intermittent. The combined length of culverts for permanent streams is 1,120 m and for intermittent streams is 3,045 m.
Embankments up to 46.5m high and cuts up to 45.8m deep are going to involve massive earth works and from looking at the drawings, there are quite a few of a similar size to the biggest ones. To put them in perspective, the height of the Newmarket Viaduct is about 20m while the amount of clearance under the harbour bridge at high tide is 43m. The document says that in total there will be ~8 million m³ of material cut from hills as part of the earthworks and of that ~6.2 million m³ will be reused as fill. If those massive cuts and embankments aren’t enough there are 7 major viaducts and 5 bridges on the route. With all of this the project is sounding like a construction company’s wet dream.
Moving on and Appendix C contains a letter from consultant the NZTA about the economic effects of the project. It appears that it is only focusing on the direct impacts of the project rather than being an economic justification, yet even so there isn’t a chart, table or even a number that gives any kind of information about what the impacts will be. Most of the points seem to be similar to “this is likely to have a positive impact” type statements.
The last section I looked at was the traffic assessment – although I haven’t finished going through it yet so expect more posts on it in the future. The few things that have caught my attention early on though are the following bits:
And this section shortly after
To sum all of that up, the problems on the road that cause congestion happen during the summer months when heaps of people are going away on holiday to the beaches primarily to the east of Warkworth. The rest of the time it handles less traffic than many single lane arterials in Auckland. Spending hundreds of millions (latest estimate I saw was $760m) just so that some people going on holiday can get to their batches a few minutes quicker hardly seems like a good use our money. But at least the NZTA is finally starting to admit that it is this group that the project is being built for rather than the stupid line about it being a lifeline for Northland (perhaps that is more of a politician line though)
I will continue to go through the transport assessment and do a more detailed post in the future as there looks to be some interesting data in there.
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And from the Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11121991. 4 minutes travel savings they say.
And I see NZTA and the media have gone back to using the $760M construction price figure. I’m sure I read that NZTA had upped the estimate to $1B. Apart from a couple of media mentions that figure has disappeared from NZTA documents. Hmmmmm
They expect just 14k vehicles to use the road daily? And a further 14K or so to carry on using the old road? Something doesn’t add up as the current VPD on the motorway is just over 14K.
And $760M for 14K vpd? Madness.
14kvpd is about what uses the toll road now. I’m guessing they are suggesting the same number will still use the old road as there isn’t as much time saving by comparison to the existing toll road and so with the new road tolled too, lots will avoid it.
As usual the project is looked at in isolation here. Predicted travel time savings of 15 minutes for the holiday peak will never eventuate because traffic will have to pass through the single lane Johnson’s tunnel.
As everyone knows, there is plenty of capacity on the existing road. Tax and spend, tax and spend…
I’m pretty certain that the Johnson’s tunnels are actually both built for 2 lanes but the northbound tunnel is merely marked as a single lane to avoid conflict on the obscured downhill section on the northern side.
So is it a design [stuff] up? When will it ever be two lanes?
It is 2 lanes in design but not in road markings. It was designed to link into a dual carriageway in the future but keeping 2 northbound lanes through the tunnel and then on to a single lane road on the downhill side would have had a poor outcome for road safety.
Right, gotcha.
can you please refrain from using obscene language, it is not called for.
Humble apologies. This one gets my blood boiling though. *Jolly* outrageous.
> can you please refrain from using obscene language, it is not called for.
I disagree – this wasting of my tax money is a perfect occasion for expletives.
The obscenity in this case wasn’t Cameron’s entirely understandable language but rather the proposal he was discussing. Not only a total waste of taxpayer money, but a social and environmental disaster in the making. It’s the result of National party hubris combined with roading interest cupidity, engineering egomania and bureaucratic myopia; a lethal combination.
… oh, and great post Matt, thanks. The lack of economic analysis is staggering. How can a Board of Inquiry let this stand? If you are going to impact on the enironment in such a massive way, surely there needs to be some benefit tradeoff?
Yes. The benefits are dubious at best.
Have been asking the NZTA for the economic benefits and they won’t provide them. They say that they aren’t relevant for consent hearings which are about environmental impact. This is funny as they usually shout the benefits from the rooftops to anyone who will listen. Suggests that they don’t look good.
OIA time?
The Board of Inquiry – like at Waterview – has NO remit to look at the economic efficiency of a project. Basically, all they can do is “you are proposing enough / not enough mitigation for your effects”, and then make calls on what mitigation is needed. Quite literally, if this motorway ended straight into a hillside and was never intended to be linked up, they couldn’t decline it on that basis. In fact, they would probably have to give it higher marks because there’d be less traffic, and therefore less effects to be mitigated.
The Board of Inquiry is good to ensure that the environmental effects are properly assessed and mitigated. It is not (for good or bad) a decisionmaker as to whether a project should or should not proceed. Which has some advantages, because down the line, we won’t find a BOI declining busways and rail tunnels either, just because they don’t like them.
The buck stops and starts with the politicians, as is right and proper. Don’t look to courts to save you – VOTE against this madness instead.
Wouldn’t the ultimate mitigation be to do something else other than the toll road? Could we submit to the BOI that one way to mitigate the environmental effects would be to not do the project?
I wonder what the environmental damage threshold has to be for a project before a BOI would rule against it?
I understand that “not to do the project” is not an option for them to rule legally, unless they could show that the project violates strategic principles or laws. But ask a lawyer and/or planner to confirm that – and I suspect that the laws and strategic principles accommodate Puhoi-Wellsford nicely anyway. This government wrote them.
Environmental damage treshold? Well, theoretically, if the damage gets very big, then the mitigation could get quite extensive too. Again, I am not sure whether there’s even a formal possibility of ruling it out on environmental grounds as such – as there’s always mitigation, even if it ends up further away from the site, and useless in the short term…
One “benefit” from the BoI approach is that the cost of this project – once all the mitigation is determined – could balloon quite a bit. Of course all that is based on my knowledge of the Waterview BoI – who knows, different board members, different project, much less public than one in the centre of Auckland… no certainty that the BoI for this one will ask for quite as much mitigation…
I do notice Cameron that there is a section on addressing alternatives that the Board can and hopefully will address more completely, especially if there are submission on such alternatives. The board doesn’t care whether there is a RONS standard that has to be addressed (which has certainly constrained NZTA), so in judging the merits of the project it can look more fully at those alternatives than the once over lightly that they got in NZTA’s approach.
The alternatives are all motorway alternatives. They ruled out even assessing the alternative of upgrading the existing road as it didn’t meet the governments requirements for an offline motorway.
They did rule it out yes, but the reasons for ruling it out (which was more or less ‘we can’t make it through there with 4 lanes with a design speed of 110km/h and it will cost sort of the same but we aren’t telling how much) are in the submission so can be addressed. If the board is truly following its remit they will look into this. Especially if there is a mass of submissions to that point.
I agree and think it could be a major issue to hammer them with.
Unfortunately the designation process only allows them to assess how well the project achieves whatever they’ve chosen as the objective, and alternatives to get to the same objective. If the objective is stated as ‘build a 4 lane motorway past Warkworth’ then they can claim they’re achieving it. The bigger question of whether or not the thing is needed in the first place is outside this process unfortunately – that is dictated by government policy, hence the comment about voting.
The figures I would like to see is the price to maintain the current section of SH1 from Puhoi to Warkworth that will become the responsibility of Auckland ratepayers once the motorway is built. That’s coming out of your rates ladies and gentlemen.
I’m sure that family trusts etc. who own sub-dividable land around Warkworth will benefit hugely.
NZTA definitely needs one of these departmental science advisors that our chief science advisor Gluckman speaks of. If anything needs an evidence-based approach (and poll stats are not evidence) it is the RoNS.
Julie Anne Genter needs to rip this consent application a new one.
This is going to be tolled right? How long is the payback period through the toll? If it pays for itself what’s not to like?
There is no information on the payback period. Because there’s been no analysis on how much the toll will be or what the traffic volumes will be as a result. But the project is going ahead regardless.
The toll on the Orewa to Puhoi section is only enough to cover a loan on half of the construction costs and that shorter section gives more time savings than this road will.
“If it pays for itself what’s not to like?”
While I agree that if it paid for itself, the issue would be much reduced, you could still ask yourself questions like “What if someone else paid for a motorway just past my backyard, what’s not to like”. That should kinda answer your questions.
The waste of money is one of the biggest issues here, but not the only one.
Plus, even if they “prove” that it pays for itself (I see not even the glimmer of that even being discussed), it would saddle us with the financial risk that traffic volumes and tolls could be much less than expected. So there’s lots of things to not like, even in your hypothetical case.
Lets say 750m at 6% interest, thats 45m a year just in interest. 14,000vpd becomes 5m trips a year, so $9 each way just to cover interest.
Copied from a previous thread (http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/07/23/the-realities-of-puhoi-to-wellsford/) on this subject:
conan
July 24, 2013 at 12:12 pm · Reply
“The Northern Motorway extension is a toll road. Its user pays so why should anyone object”
The road is forecast to cost $760million. Conveniently the PPP graph above illustrates the annual cost of running a $1b motorway at about $125m a year. So 75% of that is $94m per year. Let’s say there is traffic at the current level on the motorway of 15k per day. That’s 5.5m vehicles per year. So the toll would need to be $17 per journey to claim to be user pays. I can’t see that flying somehow.
Bryce P
July 24, 2013 at 5:47 pm
The last figure that NZTA gave was $1B for the PUFORD road.
Greg N
July 24, 2013 at 6:12 pm
It also assumes that everyone possible will use the Toll Road, when there is (by law) to be an alternative free road available, which will therefore reduce the pool of 5.5 million toll payers to a smaller amount, making said toll even higher.
conan
July 24, 2013 at 6:33 pm
Bryce that would make the toll $22 or so. Greg, I’d agree that such a level of toll would reduce the usage of the road quite substantially, which of course would then require a higher toll which would result in lower usage again. So it would seem that user pays may not be an option so Phil’s original question “Its user pays so why should anyone object” may be mute in this case.
The assessment of economic effects from Brown Copeland and co summarises the benefits as ‘traffic related benefits and economic activity generated by construction and operation.’
How can they possibly include economic activity generated by construction as one of the benefits of construction? All money spent by government is by definition going to generate some economic activity. Building an 18.5 km long shark pit for Gerry Brownlee to jump over on a motorcycle would generate economic activity by construction and operation. That doesn’t mean it is a good way to spend that money.
Even making a bonfire and burning one billion dollars cash would generate some economic activity in the purchase of matches and gasoline, and the employment of a North Rodney local to stoke the flames.
Completely agree, “economic activity generated by construction” is very poor justification that should be (rightly) ripped to shreds in the hearings.
As you point out, all government spending generates economic activity of some sort. There would seem to be many ways the Governmnent could spend $1 billion and generate more economic activity than building this highway. Compared to a business-as-usual scenario this project probably has a net negative impact on economic activity, especially when one considers the higher fuel taxes that are required to fund it. It might not even be that hard to show empirically that lowering fuel taxes nationally by a commensurate amount, rather than building this project, would have a significantly higher net impact on economic activity …
One more thing: From what I understand construction activity levels in NZ are already ramping up in response to the CHC Earthquake. In that light, does this project not run the risk of stimulating higher inflation? Realise CHC is a long way from Warkworth, but in this modern world of large companies and long distance flows of goods and services does it not seem reasonable to presume that some construction inputs will be place pressure on national capacity levels, especially labour? Perhaps when the wider inflationary impacts of this project are considered your “billion dollar bonfire” may not be that far from the truth.
I have to laugh when people suggest National is “fiscally conservative”. This is a Government that is raising fuel taxes 3c/litre for 3 years to pay for their monolithic pet projects that are demonstrably poor value, unless you’re an engineering/construction company. IMO National are the true nanny state: They’re just a conservative version of the nanny state that engages in corporate welfare instead of looking after their citizens. C’est la vie!
I have a hunch that the pigheaded ramming through of these low value RoNS will in fact lead to a crash in spending on these types of projects. If recent driving trends continue [ie less] and the tax take fails to grow as NZTA anticipate then there will be a huge financial hangover from the haste and scale of Joyce’s RoNS.
This will especially be the case if those dodgy PPPs are employed and uptake strangling tolls are put in place. Ironically Puford could be the hole in NZTA’s accounts that makes the much much worse Additional Harbour Crossing unaffordable and impossible.
Just add an NZD exchange rate drop and the next oil repricing and the National Land Transport Fund could be looking very skinny in a few years, as the RoNS snout has hoovered it dry.
I note that the ‘letter form Brown and Copeland’ Appendix C, which is as close as they get to a economic evaluation, relies on a 4.4% pa traffic growth to make its extremely modest and vague claims of benefit.
Yes quite possible. In say 10 years time after all of the RoNS have opened and traffic is still not growing like has been predicted and we are being stung by the costs of PPP we will start to see some more mainstream commentators calling this the Think Big of our time and it will probably stop the development of any more major roading projects for decades. One big last burst as you say.
The question here would be whether paying everyone who uses the current road $17 per journey (each way) (You’ll have to find the calculations I base that figure on in an earlier post- but basically takes the PPP cost of Transmission Gully which is more or less the same and divides it by expected traffic flow) a better use of the money. Some of them might even drive as far as Northland and spend it.
“Building an 18.5 km long shark pit for Gerry Brownlee to jump over on a motorcycle would generate economic activity by construction and operation.”
I believe that has actually been provided and budgeted for in NZTA’s long term plan. It is seen as a higher priority than cycling apparently.
Of course it is ridiculous. Gerry would never fit on a motorcyle.
I disagree: It’s eminently possible for HRH Brownlee to fly this chopper quite a long distance: http://www.ratraceproductions.com/three-wheeled-motorcycle-chopper.jpg
Apologies, I stand corrected. They have obviously put at least as much thought into this economically valuable shark project as the P2W road. Good on you National – standing up for the oppressed, marginalised motorists of this country for 60 years and counting!
If Gerry’s not available, perhaps Randy Cambell could do it.
The principle of a bypass of Wellsford sounds alright to me, but why does it need to be that long? an 18.5km bypass, really? It indeed sounds like very poor use of public money. I would look closely at who own the land traversed by this project and whether there’s any conflict of interest with teh decision makers there.
You mean something like this: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/operation-lifesaver/?
A bypass of Warkworth from Perry Road to the north of Warkworth (and a direct link to Sandspit Road there bypassing Warkworth) will deliver just about all of the traffic benefits of this project at a fraction of the cost. Note that the proposed costings for lifesaver covers the entire distance between Puhoi and Wellsford.
I doubt the land traversed by the project has any bearing on the decision making process.
The holiday highway problem shouldn’t be looked at in isolation of just transport. Holidays are causing concern for schools -as parents take their kids out of school for cheap travel etc. And i reckon instead of fighting that we should look at more of a flexi time system for the schools holidays. Ie 1 week of student leave should be able to be flexible in the first week of each term. Giving a bit more flexibility to school holidays would help with resources like the holiday highway, accomodation and family budgets (as familys are expected to book holidays and take travel at peak times which costs double.)