Gerry Brownlee was asked in Parliament today about the City Rail Link and the costs of delaying it.
The fact that Brownlee claims it the project isn’t being delayed is staggering. The council and Auckland Transport have for a long time being planning for construction to start in 2015 and to be completed with trains running in 2020/21. The government’s announcement in June that they would support it was that they won’t even start a new business case until 2017 and won’t start construction till 2020. That represents a 5 year delay and as Julie Anne pointed out, adds a cost of $100 million per year to the total of the project for a total additional cost of $500 million.
The figure comes from this presentation to the Transport Committee at the beginning of the month. It also points out that many of the benefits that make the CRL look better in the longer term are due to the travel times and congestion getting worse. That would leave us with the situation where we have to sit waiting for conditions to get worse before we can start working to make them better. That’s sounds like ambulance at the bottom of the cliff thinking to me.
We and the Congestion Free Network also got a mention from Labour Transport Spokesperson Iain Lees-Galloway (I wonder who will be the new transport person in the shake-up they will be having?). Gerry has refused to meet with us or the Campaign for Better Transport multiple times now with the response being that he is too busy each time we ask. I wonder how many times he has met with the AA, NZCID or other road lobby groups? Might be time for an OIA on that.
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Please do OIA Gerry Brownlee’s office. That would be excellent to have published along with Nationals reluctance for and delay of useful public transport.
I believe he meets the AA every couple of weeks…. Perhaps he keeps forgetting what they say?
What Asphaltaholics Anonymous?
If he really is that busy, then he should lose his Transport portfolio so that he can focus on Earthquake Recovery.
I gather that Mr Brownlee and his friends at the AA are just good fellows; they have so much in common, so it’s hardly surprising they’re in each others pockets.
Where does the additional $100 million per year cost come from? If it’s simply due to cost inflation then it’s rather irrelevant.
I think Matt has phrased it badly. I assume the $100m is the economic cost of not having the CRL – the lost benefit if you like. It seems a little funny to me though as surely a later business case date would mean a later cut-off for benefits, increasing them.
Yes so although it may cost an extra $100 million it may make an additional $110 million in savings resulting in a net saving or $10 million and hence why the economics are better with a latter start date.
the economics are only better on paper though because of the cut off date. In reality you’ve lost the benefit.
So putting it back 5 years we loose the benefits from 2020-2025, but we gain the benefits from 2050-2055 when the city is far more congested and thus greater benefits are gained later than what is lost earlier.
In reality the benefits from 2050-2055 would happen anyway. The benefits aren’t lost just because they fall outside our cut-off dates for measurement.
The benefits from 2020-2025 are lost forever though, we can’t go back and give people half an hour a day of their life back for 5 years.
Hence why you use net present value when doing these calculations.
Ahh I see in the paper today that it is the actual construction cost that increases by $100 million a year if the project is postponed 5 years.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/transport/news/article.cfm?c_id=97&objectid=11126745
That brings the total construction cost to $3.3 billion.
Given this increase in cost is due to inflation it should not really be that much of a concern as we are not paying for it today but at the time of construction and therefore the money we use to pay for it has also increased with inflation at an equal amount.
Another aspect that may come as a benefit to the council is that the property they have purchased would have increased by 25% in resale value if you assume a 5% annual increase in value.
As a disinterested observer, it seemed to me that both participants in the debate presented reasonable arguments from their respective points of view. However, I agree with SF Lauren that the rationale behind the $100m/year claim needs to be explored. Early expenditure on an appreciating asset such as a house makes sense, compared with a depreciating asset such as a car. Infrastructure expenditure is more or less time neutral.
Footnote: Julie Ann Genter’s graph on declining traffic volumes was somewhat of an own goal vis a vis congestion. It would also be interesting to see the scales on the axes.
So on one hand we are being told traffic volumes are reducing and therefore there will be less congestion but on the other hand we are told we need the CRL before we go to bed tonight or we will be stuck in congestion from the booming traffic volumes. It seems the argument is arguing against it’s own case.
Traffic volumes are reducing because more people are taking PT. Hence the need for investment in PT. Just look at the bridge. Vehicle volumes are down, but people volumes are up
The requirement for additional expenditure in anything should be driven by the fact that there is something wrong with what you currently have. For example you would not buy a new TV just because you watch TV, but you may if there are a whole bunch of people watching it. Or you may not be happy with the fact it’s black n while or not HD.
In terms of traffic volumes reducing due to more people taking PT this is yet to be proven the case, we have certainly seen a reduction in km driven per person but the reasons as to why have never been explored. We have seen less traffic over the harbour bridge because more people have been going over the other harbour bridge and so the total number of vehicle crossing has continued to increase. We have also seen less vehicles enter the CBD however the CBD is only one part of the city accounting for maybe 10% of all trips. Other things we have seen is increased cycle / pedestrian use as well as people living in the CBD therefore requiring neither cars or PT to a large extent.
Declining traffic volumes never seems to be a barrier to increased road spend, so I fail to see why increasing PT volumes should suffer a different result.
Besides, congestion is a red herring (or strawman). It’s happening and will continue. The argument is about moving the most people around, in the most efficient manner.
Very good point. It is almost impossible to “solve” congestion, congestion is a sign of a growing, evidenced by the fact that Detroit has managed to solve its congestion problem – by failing.
Grade separated PT is a way of giving people the option of getting out of the congestion and getting on with things. There is still congestion on the Northern Motorway despite the runaway success of the Northern Busway.
Plug! We’re holding a bit of a rally on Sunday to show that CRL 2015 is still possible. Meet at Britomart in the “drop off zone” at 3:30pm this Sunday September 22nd. More info: https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/newsletters/Julie-meeting-180913-web.html
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/513161218763247/
Despite being a strong supporter of the City Rail Link, I have to agree with what Gerry Brownlee said. There is no government delay, despite what the council and AT have planned, as the CRL has no start date.
come on Chris. The govt is delaying the project, pure and simple.
Council ready for a 2016 start date, but the govt not providing the funding.
Won’t even allow a business case until 2017!
The CRL has no start date because the government has only in the last few months committed to ever funding the thing. The cost is beyond the means of Auckland Council, and it’s also massively inequitable for there to be any expectation that Auckland residents would pay for core transport infrastructure entirely when a road of a similar role would be funding significantly (if not entirely) by central government.
It’s absolutely a government delay. If National hadn’t come out fighting against the CRL the moment it got public attention, and continued to fight right up to the point where it became apparent that they were on the wrong side of public opinion, the project would be at least two years further along,
Sorry Matt L; pedant’s corner here. The title of the post has a typo: Parliament, not Parliment. Of course, given the cynical ingenuousness displayed by the Minister for Transport in his response to the points raised by Ms Genter, it’s hardly surprising you should get the name of this increasingly discredited body a little wrong.
He’s still calling it a “loop”. *sigh*
In the above performance he has completely reverted to type, bagging the project, mis naming it, and, constantly referring to ways of spending the ‘government’s money’. Newsflash Gerry: That’s our money, not yours to piss away on last century’s mode.
Where does fatty get his 0.4 – 0.9 BCR for the CRL? Is it loosely based on fact or did he just pull it out of his ample behind?
Loosely based in fact, courtesy of NZTA’s narrow rules for conducting benefit-cost analyses. Not allowed to consider wider benefits, only allowed to consider a 30-year life. With wider benefits the CRL has a range that goes to above 3, depending on the discount rate. The Steven Joyce Memorial Holiday Highway only gets a BCR above 1 with wider benefits included, by comparison, and without them scores worse than the CRL.
And the Holiday Highway is probably one of the better performers in terms of BCR of the remaining RoNS.
Lorde’s We are Royals song talks about everyday teens waiting at the train stops and hanging out. Gerry Brownlees is completely focused on building roads. Who’s cooler and knows more about youth culture and trends of the future? Hmmmm. Look to art and pop culture to see how people are living their lives. Come on Gerry get on board with the Rail link already.
Isn’t AC already buying up the nessessary land + getting things underway already?
I really don’t understand what planet Gerry Brownlee is on, but his quoting of the return on investment is just wrong and blatantly so… What’s the life expectancy of the CRL? multiply the minutes saved by its introduction, not to mention the extra trips that can then be made by lets say the minimum wage and I’m sure it’ll add up to Billions of dollars. Brownlee is just a lap dog of the Government that’s genuinely stalling.
May I suggest that the spanner in the works could very well be the Americas cup should it be brough to NZ and is raced in 5 years time… Seems the only way we as a City ever get a move on with things is when Global attention is thrust onto our city/country. Hopefully Len Brown can leverage this event to further the CRL along, so that we can then get the airport linked into the rail line…
So what you are saying is that there is a possibility that Auckland’s transport infrastructure is actually perfectly adequate, requiring no substantial investment. Which is ridiculous.
SF Lauren is roading engineer and this has always been his line – that Auckland has a fantastic transport system that doesnt need any work. So we can just keep happily building roads – coincidentally, but of course unrelated, also where his bread and butter comes from.
Dont get sucked in to the mistake of trying to debate with him that I and many others have made. You may as well go and debate evolution with a fundamental Christian creationist. save your energy for more constructive discussions.
I think that’s a bit unfair, he feel generally presents quite reasoned arguments that make for healthy debate in these forums. Rather more informative than the debates that happen in parliament!
he or she that is…
Definitely he. He’s been referred to as “Richard” by a couple of the operators.
What reasoned arguments like that Auckland has a better public transport system than most European capitals or large North American cities? Therefore we should all just be grateful for what dinosaur roading engineers like him are prepared to provide in the way of PT or cycling infrastructure. I dont call that healthy.
The fact your bosses instruct you to work on PT projects doesn’t mean they’d be your choice to be first-built if given the option, that much is evident.
I’ve heard it all now. Calling someone out for spurious and strawman arguments is “bullying”….
That was a reply to a comment from SF Lauren which seems to have disappeared.
The only solution to this perpetual ideological impasse is to vote this government out, pure and simple, otherwise nothing is going change.
The fact that they have conditionally agreed to assist to the CRL (conditionally being an understatement) is meaningless and in all probability insincere. And even if they did sign on the dotted line they are committing another government to sizeable financial expenditure, all the while flogging off whatever state assets they can thereby killing off that future governments revenue stream. The whole thing as it stands in 2013 is a recipe for disaster.
The current regime are unswervingly opposed to evidence-based policy formulation, in pretty much all areas: environmental, legal, educational, transport… The only area where they’ve allowed evidence to creep in is in recreational substances, and even there they haven’t followed the evidence all the way; they’ve merely provided for evidence to be presented to have substances permitted for sale.
I have no problem with a change of government Waspman, as has just happened in Australia, but what do you propose that would be better than the present lot: Green/Labour/Maori/Mana? ACT/Conservative/NZFirst? On single issues one might make a choice in a particular direction, but it’s important to see the big picture, eg fiscal responsibility, social issues, moral values etc. While the latter two aspects are more emotive, it’s the first one that determines our economic survival as a nation. The last Labour government deliberately left the cupboard bare; do we really want a repeat of that? (I guess some will answer “yes”!) Or do we suck it up that National isn’t doing everything we would like but overall are keeping the country stable and on track?
The only reason National got to cut taxes on arrival was that Labour paid down core Crown debt to $300m, which is effectively zero. Labour’s social policies, which supposedly broke the country, are all still in place. Every single one. If they were so financially destructive, how could the supposedly good economic managers of the National Party not only keep them, but also cut the taxes that paid for them? National are fiscal incompetents. They cut taxes, kept expensive policies, and have successfully bullcrapped the public (such as yourself) into believing that it’s all Labour’s fault. Every policy that Labour brought in was affordable at the time. Every one. It’s not Labour’s fault that fiscal ignoramuses took over the Treasury benches and proceeded to cut revenue while maintaining expenses.
Run the country like a business? You sure as hell don’t deliberately cut your income without also cutting your outgoings. It’s grossly irresponsible. It’s worse that the media have sold the National narrative of Labour’s supposed fiscal mismanagement with such vigour and passion that it’s largely accepted that the country was broke when National took over. The country hadn’t been in better financial shape in decades, actually, but let’s not let the truth get in the way of a good line of wind up the proverbial from B’linglish and Key.
If you want economic management, the current clowns have demonstrated zero competence at the portfolio, only at selling the public a splendid line of bollocks. Labour have far better economic credentials, based on their last term in office, and the Greens believe in spending local money locally so that not only do NZers have jobs but there’s also income tax and GST circulating in the great Kiwi money-go-round.
I was really pleased when National was voted in as I thought a fiscally conservative, right of centre government is generally the right choice for tough economic times. I also liked John Key (especially as he grew up in the same suburb as me in Chch) and respected him for his background in the money markets – one I have some experience of in London.
However, I have generally been disappointed by their economic policies and of course in transport. Their social policies I am really happy about and they are sticking with their libertarian ideology there which is great. I dont think their ideological adherence to the neoliberal/libertarian economic dogma in the face of contrary evidence is serving NZ well on the economic front.
I am especially dismayed to see the widening rich/poor divide. Although I sit on the more preferable side of that divide, I dont want to live, or my children to live, in a country with such a wide divide. I have lived in countries like that and it is spirit and morale sapping to see working people struggling and takes away any enjoyment of the advantages relative wealth brings. At least, for people who have any empathy or social conscience.
I see that as the final destination for the road we are on now with National. I am very disappointed.
National? Social libertarians? HAH! GCSB bill, anyone? Or maybe removing the right to judicial recourse from various groups? How about criminalising peaceful protest on the high seas? Or the significant vote against marriage equality from the National Party caucus? Yup, they sure are social libertarians, that National Party.
Stable and on track… stable compared to what and on what track, the wrong one? To be accurate the previous government ran consistent surpluses and were derided by National for not cutting taxes despite targeted tax relief. The cupboard was far from bare. They also brought about Kiwisaver as a national savings scheme for example that has since been well and truly eroded by National.
Roads such as the Holiday Highway are anything but fiscally responsible and the cost benefit analysis does not stack up well at all for that and others.
If you look at the big picture in the last 5 years we have essentially gone nowhere as an economy and as a nation in terms of democracy (GCSB bill, MMP referendum shelved) and environment (RMA amendments) it could easily be argued we’ve gone backwards. and blaming the global financial melt down for our insipid economy is not cutting it any more. We are far more indebted than we were as a nation since National took office. So selling assets is the next short term junkies fix to our woes.
Similarly the throwing about of 100’s of millions of tax payer dollars over lunches for the likes of Warner Bros, Sky City gambling law changes, Rio Tinto pay out for 18 months more production, not to mention the murkiness of the ultra fast broadband roll out with Chorus really gives cause to wonder how a government like NZ’s has come to do such deals.
As independent analysis by the NZIER has found (also read Rod Oram’s column from a couple of weeks back in the Sunday Star Times) our present economy is based on an earthquake in Christchurch and the resulting rebuild and the speculative, foreign debt fuelled, Auckland housing market; hardly inspirational management. And lastly ACT and the Maori Party are part of the current administration.
But all this is off track, because as I said National will not be swayed by the logic, for whatever real reason they have, that more roads and motorways that have to date failed solved the traffic problems in this city are a waste of money and that surely is a case for fiscal irresponsibility.
I know this is politics and what not, but seriously can Brownlee and even Carter listen to their answers? The question described 2015 as a “preferred” start date but Brownlee assumed that 2015 was an “agreed” date and made some nonsense out of that.
On the other hand, congratulations to all those involved in the CFN. It’s really awesome to say the least that such a beautiful and well-thought out project is being discussed on a governmental level.