How is it that mega-projects costing billions get such little public involvement and scrutiny? That’s a question that Mayor Wayne Brown effectively hits on in an interview a few days ago with the Herald where he spoke on plans for an additional harbour crossing.
The Government is working on plans to build tunnels for a new Auckland harbour crossing in secret, according to Mayor Wayne Brown.
“The idea that we would have a cross-harbour study that’s secret from the city that surrounds the harbour is nuts,” he said.
The mayor is accusing the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) of keeping council in the dark over its feasibility study into options.
“We know nothing. We don’t even know where their office is. We don’t know who the consultants are. It’s bizarre.”
Transport Minister Chris Bishop rejected this, saying the Government has been “very open” about its plans and the process.
“For the last few months a barge has been operating in the harbour to look at the ground and seabed conditions, to help inform decisions … this is hardly a secret. I’ve talked about it with the mayor, and I understand he has met with NZTA about it as well.”
The mayor is of course still keen on the silly idea of a bridge making use of Meola Reef – which is something we covered last year, and would require plowing a motorway though Pt Chev and large parts of the western North Shore. While we disagree on his proposed solution, he’s not wrong on the issue of secrecy.
Sure, as Minister Bishop points out, it’s hardly a secret that testing of ground and seabed conditions has been ongoing for a while – but that comes part of a process that Auckland has had no involvement in. Auckland doesn’t even get a say in what form the crossing might take or what modes might be accommodated, as highlighted last year by then Minister of Transport Simeon Brown who ruled out the new crossing including active modes or light rail:
However, consistent with our commitment to getting back to basics, we have decided not to continue work on active mode options or the proposed light rail connection.
As an aside, it’s insanely stupid that we might spend billions on a new harbour crossing and lock in no active mode options for likely another few generations. No other city would do that, and we’d be a laughing stock if we did.
If a new harbour crossing ever does actually go ahead – and it’s hard to see any government wanting to stump up the eye-watering sums that would be required – it is a project that will happen to Auckland, and any local involvement is likely to be at the level of some of the smaller details.
One response might be that if the government is paying, they can do what they like. But this ignores the fact that any centrally-led project for our largest city, especially one on this scale, is going to have significant knock-on effects. For example, a new crossing potentially pointing a firehose of traffic towards the city centre at the same time Auckland has been working on making the city centre more people-friendly.
Another argument that sometimes comes up is that it is best practice to have experts quietly doing all of the technical work upfront. But that approach often also produces poor results, especially when those experts are left to define their own scope, and often embed their own preferences into the process. For example, I’ve heard numerous stories from many different projects where someone will make an early decision without any evidence to back it up, yet it gets treated as gospel from then on, and permanently changes the outcome of the project.
It’s worth pointing out that this secrecy is not something that’s unique to this government. The previous Labour government’s plans for an additional harbour crossing were similarly kept under wraps, as were even earlier iterations of the project. (Ed: see also Labour’s idea of a dedicated active modes bridge, which wasn’t tested with community stakeholders at all, and thus withered away when exposed to the daylight… when, with smarter early input and consideration of public transport, it could potentially have been a real vote-winner and an asset to the nation.)
We’ve also seen this behaviour with other projects, most recently with Light Rail, where the team behind it wouldn’t even say where the station locations would be.
It’s almost like the bigger the project, the more secrecy and the less public and local government involvement there is.
Media play a big role here too. Mega-projects get fawned over, with media often cheerleading them and very rarely looking into details of what it all means, what we’re getting for the mega-budgets, nor the ongoing costs (which include opportunity costs).
By contrast, look at the disproportionate attention that small projects get. Building a short section of cycleway, or proposing to take away a car park or two – or even just making people pay to use them – will often result in more column inches in the media, and more scrutiny from both local and central government politicians, than any multi-billion-dollar mega-project ever experiences.
All of this is the opposite of how it should be. The bigger the project, the more transparency and accountability there should be.
How do we change that?
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A second Auckland Harbour crossing without any allocation for other nodes (rail, cycle, walking) will destroy Auckland’s chances of ever being a world class city and will prevent the free-flowing movement of Auckland citizens for generations to come. This is a fact.
Building more roads without viable transport alternatives -> more road use -> more congestion. And we wonder how we got to the transport disaster we have now in Auckland, the exact same poor, short-sighted planning as 70 years ago.
Another plug for this book: https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2024/12/19/book-review-how-big-things-get-done/. It should actually be called ‘How big projects fail and go badly over-budget (unless we account for politics and psychology)’. Looks like another case study being written.
Yep – Wayne has lost control of Aucklands transport future to Wellingtons car only fever dream.
RNZ’s “The Detail” did an excellent article on Aucklands new harbour crossing.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/thedetail/560530/drilling-for-auckland-s-mythical-harbour-crossing
Click the AUDIO link and listen from 3:30m on, you will hear that the 12 lanes specifically exclude active modes as a directive from the current government (but we can add it in the future…)
Sounds like Auckland’s up for another 50 years of articles on “should the bridge have a footpath” etc
Currently it looks like NZTA are carrying out geological study of the harbour bed sufficient to determine what any works there would be dealing with. I doubt there would be much benefit in poking into Meola Reef for an old, dead idea – cheap bridge into horrendously expensive tunnel under Birkenhead?
The Minister against Auckland should be long gone by the time any viable project for a crossing could be developed. ‘Back to Basics’ might mean not deciding on the answer before you know the question.
The strategic business case, done a few years ago, clearly found that the highest priority is to add the missing modes across the harbour, this is where the greatest benefit is.
So of course this govt is ignoring evidence and has inverted that, on reckons, cos culture war.
So true.
We are forgetting that the current Mayor of Auckland, is an expert on everything. Hence his wacky and totally impractical idea to build a 2nd harbour bridge, from Pt Chev to Birkenhead..
So far, Garth Falconer’s solution seems to be both practical, and affordable.
See: https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350419348/bridge-over-troubled-tunnels-architect-reveals-concepts-auckland-crossing
The government’s stance on not including provision for the RTN in the harbour crossing has unfortunate echoes of their decision to not build the NW busway when SH16 was widened. I predict that we will later have to spend a sh*tload of money rectifying this decision later – just as we are with the NW busway.
I think the difference this time will be the harbour crossing won’t go ahead.
Except that on the north shore it’s a cargo cult so the George Woods and Erica Stanfords of this world will continue to demand it forever.
Has the government actually defined what are the problems? , and how big are they? before trying to pick any solutions.
Moving people, and moving goods, are actually very different problems for a start.
And from where, to where needs, to be ascertained. One thing is for sure, the answer is not from Herne Bay to Northcote Point.
Providing just more motor car capacity between the north and south shores of the Waitemata is just going to further impede movement, and cause further vehicle storage, and environmental degradation problems radiating out from both abutments or tunnel entrances. And scarce and valuable land will be lost for potentially more economically and socially productive uses.
> will make an early decision without any evidence to back it up, yet it gets treated as gospel from then on, and permanently changes the outcome of the project.
I can’t help but feel this kind of path dependence happened with ALR. Not in precisely the same sense but even the absurdly expensive surface light rail cost per km that ALR estimated would’ve allowed a crosstown route linking Onehunga and the Western Line with light rail without exceeding the costs of the tunnelled project.
Was the ALR team ever allowed to present two lines for the price of one as a possibility or had someone said “you’re doing one line”? Either the people involved with incredibly incompetent/malicious actors or they must’ve been precluded from doing a complete analysis from on high.
The whole point of CBA on a theoretical level is that you don’t artificially close off options so if this did happen it’s doubly bad.
ALR’s proof of concept (Dom Rd) was the most complex, disruptive and expensive route possible. Once it never got off the ground for those reasons, nothing else would either.
Had they chosen a more realistic route then everyone would have been putting up their hand for one. Including the good folk of Dom Rd.
Ditto with shutting off the heavy rail via Onehunga option. they said it would be more expensive (and rationally, anyone with half a braincell and access to the NZTA’s cost per km figures for different modes can logic this out for themselves), but ALR never showed their working even in the short-listed assessments iirc
NZTAs budget assumption of comparing modes treated the light rail as already built to the bridge rather than the real comparison which is the cost of extending the Onehunga line to the airport vs a new light rail line from the city to the airport.
Which I believe was $3 billion for the full light rail build at the time.
But I don’t believe the NZTA cost comparison included the rebuild of the Onehunga branch line in its $2 billion figure for heavy rail either, that was a separate appendix in the Jacob’s report and an additional half a billion dollars (with a flat junction at Penrose and apparent deletion of Penrose Station as a stop for the Onehunga/Airport Line too)