There’s been a lot of talk recently about a cross-party agreement to develop a pipeline for infrastructure, including transport. Last month, outgoing CRL boss Sean Sweeney talked about the importance of securing an enduring infrastructure programme. He outlined the high costs of the relentless political flip-flopping of priorities, which drives away skilled workers, drives up the cost of delivery, and hamstrings our future .
“At the moment, when we do these projects, the country is paying an enormous premium because we’re doing them as a series of one-offs.”
He added: “I’ve sat in rooms where politicians have talked about the issue of an [infrastructure] pipeline.
“There’s a view that they have a right to do that; they’re elected on a mandate. I understand that view. What I don’t think politicians or the public understand is how expensive that is making building in New Zealand.”
So it’s good news that the Minister of Housing Chris Bishop is looking to set up the foundations to solve this issue. His aim is to use the Infrastructure Commission, cross-party engagement, and involvement with the wider sector to develop a lasting list of pipeline projects.
This is a laudable goal. Unfortunately, there are many, many elephants in the room… and one is most certainly the colour Brown.
Thing is, the key to any long-term cross-party accord is the ability of political leaders to compromise, and then stick to the plan. By definition, compromise requires mutual concession: you each give up something to reach agreement. And this can only happen when all sides agree to operate in good faith and seek common ground for the common good.
Otherwise, we’re stuck in a stop-start merry-go-round: as each new government comes in, one set of projects is dropped in favour of another. Ad nauseam.
The pendulum is broken
Governments of both stripes regularly perform this switcheroo. But what the coalition government is doing is not a normal swing of the pendulum. Instead, proudly spearheaded by Simeon Brown, the Minister for Transport, Energy, Local Government, and Auckland, it is on a mission to lock us into one of the most ideologically driven and non-evidenced transport pathways this country has ever seen – for a generation or more.
Taking as gospel the horrifically unbalanced Government Policy Statement for Land Transport, the coalition has initiated a vicious Inquisition against the most humble, back-to-basics, bang-for-buck forms of everyday transport: walking and cycling. The plan is to purity-test every single local project to ensure every last dollar is saved for the holy roads.
This crusade against cycling, walking, public transport and road safety restricts investment in the streets that run through our neighbourhoods, towns, and cities:
The Government expects that funding in this activity class will not be used to invest in other new multi-modal improvements, i.e., cycleways and busways, or fund traffic calming measures, such as speed bumps, raised crossings and in-lane bus stops, which inconvenience motorists.
The National Land Transport Programme produced by NZTA follows this GPS with zeal, effectively torching any investment for new cycling and walking projects.
And while it’s good the Northwest Busway will see some progress, the entire category of Public Transport still sits far below the exalted Roads of National Significance. Billions of dollars will be spent on paperwork and consultants for these quixotic projects in the next three years, long ahead of any actual shovels breaking the ground, planning future RoNS that already have hospital-size gaps in their funding.
This exorbitance is unaffordable. As laid out in the NZ Herald by Thomas Coughlan, under the headline the Infrastructure Commission is warning that:
A single road network in Northland will consume one dollar in every 10 spent by the Government on infrastructure over the next 25 years – excluding maintenance and renewals. […]
In a paper on a Northland expressway network that will eventually connect Auckland and Whangārei, the [Infrastructure Commission] warned that this was a large proportion of the pool of capital intended to be spent on all other central government infrastructure like, “roads, hospitals, schools, defence, justice, public admin, etc”.
It also warned that the already high cost of the project could double.
In other words, up to one fifth of our nation’s infrastructure investment across a whole generation will be spent on just one road in one corner of one island. (And this doesn’t include the cost to repair and/or reseal this new four-lane highway, amidst the guaranteed risk of extreme weather events). As Matt noted in yesterday’s post, this is way overscoped and represents enormous opportunity cost.
Asked to explain his thinking, the Minister of Transport repeated his well-worn talking point:
“The Government has an ambitious plan to boost productivity and support economic growth by delivering the infrastructure New Zealand requires to get people and freight to get to where they want to go quickly and safely.”
Meanwhile, the RNZ version of the story reports: “Bishop declined to comment.”
But wait, no one expects another Inquisition!
As well, the car-obsessed Minister and government have decided to embark on a hit-and-run joyride against another key element of the infrastructure pipeline discussion: the need for central government to work agreeably with local governments.
With fanatical glee, the coalition is forcing unsafe and costly reversals to speed limit reductions on councils and authorities across the country. They are doing this propped up on a foundation of misinformation and nonsensical reasoning – brazenly ignoring local wishes, defying all credible evidence, and even overriding previous advocacy by their own ministers on behalf of communities.
This would be comical, if it didn’t inexorably lead to deaths and injuries.
The government is talking a big talk about “city deals”, but all their rhetoric and action points towards imposing their worldview to scour local government of what they deem “nice-to-haves” – abominations like arts, festivals, community centres and libraries, bike paths, safe streets, healthy parks. In other words, anything that gives a place soul: these are to be crushed under the grim and depressing, needless austerity mantra of returning to simply “rubbish, roads, and water.”
This is the paternalistic imposition of someone who “knows best”. We have all met these people in our lives.
There is another way – and we know, because we’ve seen it
For any compromise, you need to operate in good faith and be willing to work together in genuine partnership for the common good.
Local government plays an essential role in delivering transport and infrastructure. This was recognised in 2016 by the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) in 2016, which, although it was not perfect, broadly set a positive direction for Auckland. ATAP was a collaborative effort between Auckland Council – led by former Mayor Len Brown and former Deputy Mayor Bill Cashmore – and the National Government at the time, represented by now-Chair-of-NZTA but then-Transport Minister Simon Bridges and former Prime Minister Bill English.
Here’s what Len Brown said, at the ATAP announcement:
First of all I would like to acknowledge Minister Simon and in his absence Minister Bill, our deputy prime minister, both of whom have worked extraordinarily well and collaboratively beside myself and Bill Cashmore in a four-person team, who have had the unenviable job of finally resolving a positive and clear way forward for transport between our government and the council.
[…]
The ATAP agreement is designed to end 100 years of arguments and divisiveness on this matter between our councils and the government. Against that historical backdrop, we are looking for a historical and unique way forward, and the ATAP, the Auckland Transport Alignment Project, is designed to ensure that.
Mayor Len Brown’s words followed Simon Bridges’ address, which began with a list of all the transport projects going on at the time, like the CRL, AMETI/ Eastern Busway, Puhoi to Warkworth, and the Urban Cycleways Programme. Notice how all the activity classes of land transport are represented. Bridges then said (emphasis added):
…that leads me to my second point today. And that is, we have a serious long-term view here in this report for Auckland. This report recognises that there’s no silver bullet. That yes, prioritised additional investment is required. But ATAP also recognises that we can’t just build our way out of this problem in the long run. It’s clear extra investment is needed. But if we look to the future, it’s not possible to just keep on adding lanes to the motorways. It becomes more and more expensive for less and less gain.
The report is clearly stating we also need to make better use of our existing networks and explore new opportunities to influence travel demand.
It’s fascinating to look back at this from 2024, considering Simon Bridges in his current role is driving forward the current wildly skewed agenda.
Never forget that while the National Government of John Key did focus on roads, it also introduced transformative funding to kickstart urban cycleway networks, and funded CRL despite having opposed it for many years. This took courage, vision, and a willingness to speak frankly to the public about how this stuff works.
Can anyone imagine Simeon Brown doing this? Christopher Luxon? David Seymour?
Doubtful. And that’s what hampers any credibility when this government starts talking about compromise and co-operation, on anything.
Who do we believe, infra boy or infra boy?
The Weekend Herald ran an interview by Simon Wilson with Chris Bishop on the infrastructure question, which includes this striking moment:
“We’re the Infra Boys,” [Bishop] said last month at the big Building Nations conference, hosted by Infrastructure NZ in Auckland.
“Although I suppose we need some women.”
Bishop waxed eloquent about the bipartisanship that got Sydney Metro across the line, but wouldn’t be drawn on his support for light rail or metro in Aotearoa:
Infra Boy Brown has ruled out light rail completely. Does that mean he and Infra Boy Bish don’t see eye to eye?
It was a question he ducked.
But he did talk enthusiastically about the photo op provided by the Metro grand opening: there was a “striking image” of the Labour premier of New South Wales along with former Liberal premiers, all together for an inaugural ride.
Bishop’s words, and some actions (like his support for the housing accord, albeit that’s since been binned by National), suggest a genuine desire to build a cross-party accord for infrastructure. I believe he wants to do this, for the greater good of this country. This is a start: to work together, you do need to believe the other partners are in it for the right reason.
But what room for optimism is there, when the actions of Simeon Brown and many others in this government show zero good-faith effort to build consensus – instead reflecting a weird and fanatical desire to relentlessly impose their creed on everyone and anyone?
Still, what might a cross-party compromise look like?
If we look seriously at what a working compromise on transport might look like, it’s hard to see how it can happen with tens of billions of dollars locked into PPPs to build motorways that do not hold up to BCR scrutiny (and that would have zero chance of being funded if they were judged the same way as rail).
What the past shows us is that compromise requires sacrifice and leadership. It requires taking some risk, based on a desire to actually solve problems and fix things. It requires working together to do things we might not prefer, in the knowledge that overall we will head in the right direction.
To me, when there are good-faith and willing partners, compromise is hard but essential work.
I’m not going to sit here and say that we can’t build roads or improve the state highway network, even though I strongly believe to balance decades of neglect we should be investing the majority of funds into Public and Active Transport.
If, say, it is this government’s priority to expand the state highway network to Northland, I would gladly balance an affordable version of that priority with the development of mass rapid transit in Auckland, be that be light rail or metro, by the end of the decade.
I will gladly support improving local roads, particularly in rural areas – if that comes with an equal commitment to complete urban bike networks and improve streets to give city-dwellers a meaningful option to switch short car trips for lighter modes (thus leaving more room for those who need or want to drive).
I will gladly support renewal and maintenance of roads to fix potholes and the like, if we also get proper investment into rail to move freight and people, and more nimble options for last-mile delivery. Because that way we’d not only fix our roads, we’d also shift the heavy burden of trucks off them, reducing maintenance costs in the long run. Win win.
If this government truly looked at the evidence, and the budget, it should be easy for them to compromise on things like this.
With all of these examples, there’d need to be a discussion of priorities and funding levels – but at the end of the day, there are always pathways to successful compromise.
Unfortunately, this all falls apart when one side’s goal is not to build the best or most worthwhile and productive transport infrastructure, but to instead force four-lane state highway monstrosities that decimate our infrastructure funding, and are completely unjustifiable given their traffic levels simply don’t justify a need for four lanes. Likewise, there’s zero good faith in cancelling projects on the brink of delivery, for no reason other than political pettiness – whether they’re an interisland ferry or a raised crossing outside a school.
What we (should) agree on
To me, it’s important our transport is made fit for the 21st century. Multi-modal networks demonstrably give us congestion-free cities, while also helping fight climate change. They also reward us with more money in our pockets, and better personal and public health. We know what we need to do to get there, and that’s what they have understood in Sydney.
Of course I understand that some people prefer or indeed need to drive. I also know, as someone who grew up rurally, the pain of gravel roads, and of potholes so old and deep you could lose a wheel in them. I know many people, some quite close to my family, who have died in crashes on rural roads that are unsafe and in need of improvement. I understand the multiple and complex needs.
Seeing the whole picture – in a fair, open-hearted way – is a good basis for a working consensus.
I do hope I’m right in thinking that Bishop is seeking to be a good-faith and willing partner in developing an infrastructure pipeline to build up this country. I also hope fellow politicians of all stripes are willing to step up. I hope those in central government can bring the same good-faith attitude to work with local government to build up our cities and communities, engaging in genuine partnerships instead of steamrolling over local authorities.
But to achieve that in this political term requires an end to petty fanaticism. You just can’t negotiate with people whose world view appears skewed by oppositional culture war postures, and disdain for evidence. For any true cross-party accord to happen, our leaders will need to be humble servants, and put away the self-righteous “I know best” attitude that is a road to nowhere – except perhaps a fast lane to losing the next election.
People of good faith, step up. Your country needs you.
Header Image: Christoper Luxon, Chris Bishop and Simeon Brown in Sydney. Photo: Lillian Hanly / RNZ
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Infrastructure is touted as some wonderful path to economic growth. That lie is pushed by industry lobby groups and politicians on both sides of the house. At best infrastructure can remove a bottleneck in the economy, nothing more. Growth comes from capital and new technology, both of which get crowded out if too much money is wasted on boondoggles regardless of whether they are roads or rails.
Whilst there is some truth to that do you have any examples of cities thriving economically with terrible (Auckland level) infrastructure?
Cities that have lots of money go and pay for fancy transport systems. Their transport system didn’t make them rich. We spend a small fortune on infrastructure in this country. Problem is a lot of it is wasted on things that were never really necessary. We sink public funds into sports venues that are infrequently full or harbourside works that divert business from other parts of the city. Not to mention the metric shit-tonne of cash shredded building CRL and some stations most of us will never use.
I do think we have overdone the stations a bit….
I wonder if we had done the basics, could we have not cut the Newton station?
Didn’t really answer my question though..
The question was both loaded and dumb. It assumes Auckland has terrible infrastructure so answering it agrees with a poor premise. There are plenty of cities doing well in the world, there is probably a correlation with infrastructure because wealthy cities have money to spend on fancy things. Owning a boat doesn’t make you wealthy but a lot of wealthy people buy a boat.
Charleston is a successful city that hasn’t wasted money on expensive transport. They did build an expensive bridge but they used state and federal money and refused to put any of their own in until practically forced to commit $3mill per year.
Auckland needs more homes and more higher paying jobs. Wasting public money just makes that more difficult to achieve.
Nah KLK, Newton was even deeper than K’rd and they made the tunnels have a grade separated crossing as a result of dropping it in the redesign which was suggested by the overseas review of it all.
Not sure Miffy’s right about cart before the horse with public transport, London and New York subways were pretty early in when there was no more road space basically. Some expert will know about this. Agree the waste on stadiums, But all of that can be put back to the pre-supercity days of planning.
Not much point having more houses and high paying jobs you can’t get them to because of gridlock, housing and transport is about the most linked infrastructure you can find. It doesn’t really matter about what came first, you need horse and cart.
Most people who argue for infrastructure are the vested interests who want to design and build it. But you can have too much of it. The AK model of growth says economic growth comes from capital and labour. Infrastructure spending actually reduces K because of reduced public and private savings. I don’t know of any endogenous growth models that credit anything to public spending on infrastructure. at best you reduce a bottleneck which might improve total factor productivity. But there has to be a bottleneck to do that.
If we are short of anything it is affordable power. But that was a policy choice. Even senior Greens (J Fitzsimonds) wanted power priced at the marginal cost to produce rather than the average. So if mills are closing I guess that is efficient even if not fair.
My simple point is the Government can’t make us richer with motorways or rail lines. Trying just means we will go without healthcare and perhaps employment.
There is no way that there will ever be bi-partisanship whilst Simeon Brown is around. He reminds me people you work with who ‘play office’. Whilst his obsession with culture wars and gotcha lefties continues and whilst Christopher Luxon keeps backing him for some unknown reason other they go to the same church or Brown has dirt on Luxon then we will never get a bipartisan pipeline.
He backs him because unfortunately many voters in NZ also think that way.
Agree, NZ is much further down the motornormative path than almost any other country hence why this shift of the pendulum has caught traction here and almost nowhere else. It will take decades for people to realize they have been had by this approach to transport. At such time NZ would be the pariah of transport planning as an example of what not to do.
Suspect it will go further to us vs them, left vs right given what is happening elsewhere in the world. Only have to watch the US debate to see there’s very little in the way of intelligent, good faith politics now.
Mostly it is all just hot air with lies for distraction from actually doing anything meaningful. Look at all the BS policies so far – Treaty bill, billion dollar motorways, Seymour spouting some new crap everyday – just more wasteful distractions designed to suck media attention away from improving important things like, health, water and power. Or focusing on the actual corrupt politics like the tobacco bollocks.
Light rail, Kiwibuild, infinity trillion trees…
Pick your poison.
We’re a lot further down this road than many think and it didn’t suddenly start in October 2023.
At this point I feel we should no confidence vote next election to something crazy like “vision NZ” or something, I mean how bad could it be?
The public comment telling local councils they can’t spend on walking and cycling – exactly what ratepayers have been telling their council they want, along with better PT – doesnt sound like the “localism” he campaigned on
We know how this will go; he locks in his big road-fest and when Labour gets back in and cancels just one, he will cry they will not compromise.
He has no interest in a bi-partisan approach on infrastructure. And thats a shame because I genuinely think Bishop does but Brown looks the more forceful of the Bros.
In the long run, this is the dead rat Labour/Greens have to swallow. They wasted their opportunity with LR and this is the result. Had they been half-competent they would have been so far down the track that it could not have been cancelled.
They won a resounding majority in 2020 and campaigned heavily on LR on Auckland, but they did not deliver what the people wanted. its that simple.
Agreed. Very hard to take any transport policy from them seriously now, nor their criticism of the National approach. This isn’t something you can write-off to partisan hackery like you see in other countries, or ‘post-truth’.
They just plain got it wrong, and in a big way.
Agree. When Labour won I said they needed to get spades in the ground before the next term, otherwise National would cancel it. Luckily they won their next term, but even then they didn’t get spades in the ground. The project was doomed (again) the day Michael Wood started another consultation, he should have announced that they were going ahead with AT’s original plan.
The outcome was so obvious it makes you wonder if it was planned.
You say that but just look at the mess that is iRex or HS2 for that matter. Just because spades are in the ground or metal has been cut, doesn’t mean that it can’t be canned. It gets very expensive to do so.
Bi-partisan rings very hollow when they can’t even stick to their own policy they worked bipartisanally with the previous government to implement…MDRS.
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2023/05/29/nationals-housing-policy-backtrack/
On topic is good article yesterday :
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/are-new-zealanders-sick-and-tired-of-spending-on-cycleways-not-according-to-this-survey/7DECJBH5WNDHFAX7J6T2CTAW7M/
**
“As the graph below shows, New Zealanders are evenly split on their support for cycleways: 39% would like more bike lanes, while 39% do not want them. Among those opposed to more bike lanes, however, most are strongly (rather than somewhat) opposed.”
“….New Zealanders are fairly evenly divided on the value of bike lanes.”
“The attitude divide becomes more apparent when looking at support for cycleways by party vote. A majority of Te Pāti Māori and Green voters are in favour of more cycleways, as are 47% of Labour voters.
In contrast, 60% of Act voters and 52% of National voters are against having more cycle lanes on roads. Despite NZ First taking the strongest anti-cycleway stance of the government parties, its supporters are evenly split.”
**
Interesting the NZF party anti-cycle thing, seems to show up on this blog previously as this strange combo of being pro heavy rail yet anti light rail and cycling.
The orginal source article has the graph for roads/PT/cycle spending which The Herald seems to omit:
https://theconversation.com/are-new-zealanders-sick-and-tired-of-spending-on-cycleways-not-according-to-this-survey-238322
Relying on Local government to balance the boat between the left and the right is no guarantee thou,
“Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is urging the Government to build a second harbour bridge spanning Pt Chevalier and the North Shore as a cheaper alternate crossing option.”
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-proposes-second-harbour-bridge-crossing-from-pt-chevalier-to-north-shore/Y7OIB4NOKRFKXDHIDUD4JLSQBQ/
2nd bridge is a good idea compared to tunnels, but not there or for general traffic. Imagine the increase in local traffic at both ends of this, so they would have to amp up the lanes etc.
Light rail/metro/active mode bridge from Wynyard somewhere (might be hard now with the park etc plans for there now).
Alternatives after Queen St :
1. Run it straight across Te Komititanga (it’s so wide there anyway). Straight across Quay St down Queens Wharf (great ferry connections). Then to the shore, problem is it’s a huge water span now needed.
2. Turn left at Quay St, beaut sea views, across Eastern Viaduct and start elevating before Wynyard Crossing. Go high enough for yachts to cross under and bridge over end of Westhaven towards Northcote/Onewa as necessary. Issue Quay St has got a nice cycleway/gardens make over already along here.
3. Turn left a Customs St (what the original plan ended up deciding), down Lower Hobson St (assume viaduct removed by then, work this in with it). Carry on as 2 above from Quay.
4. Same as 3 above but go straight across from Customs linking to Madden St.
At least he is talking affordable options. This might not be the best one (personally, I like it) but someone needs to bring some sanity to the discussion when the only option the MoT is entertaining is costly tunnels.
The other thing the Mayor needs to raise is the modes. The Minister has mentioned many times he is “prioritising road infrastructure” for this, which sounds alot like making the mistakes of the previous crossing.
See the NZTA survey which showed the most preferred mode was LR, at 75%. Roads will never be excluded, but rapid transit and active modes shouldn’t be either.
Of course its affordable if you are just plonking a bridge across the easiest part of the harbour to cross. Anyone can go into Simcity 4 and draw a bridge from one end to the other..
What’s the point of his bridge, what’s it connecting to, what’s going over it? Why is it going there? Are you going to upzone?
It’s all just nonsense when everyone knows the simplest and cheapest option is a PT bridge next to the current one coupled with time of use charging. They’ve done a million case studies already. Wayne Browns ideas are just another ‘I’ve got an idea for a stadium, hear me out’
Its actually possible that the impact of time of use charging would render even a PT-Active mode bridge not necessary, yet.
Less congestion means an easier run for buses and an extra lane for bikes and scooters.
Sorry, a reallocated lane…
Laobur could just say , if it holds up to a BCR above 1 let it go ahead. If not, it’s in the bin. That could be their simple strategy for the bipartisan sham.
This is such an obvious and simple solution. Unfortunately Labour have also funded projects with BCR < 1 (e.g., Otaki to north of Levin, if I remember right).