Kia ora Minister Bishop,
Congratulations to you and the government for your work to secure cross-party support for the National Infrastructure Plan.
It is imperative that you now urgently apply that agreement to the Warkworth to Te Hana project, and to the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme as a whole, as they run entirely counter to the plan.
The funding situation, as you know, is untenable.
We have read extensive OIA releases on the unsustainable transport funding situation, which you have acknowledged publicly. They tell a challenging story about how it will be very difficult to afford any of the planned future major projects.
Explicit advice states that even with planned increases to Fuel Tax (and equivalent Road User Charges) of 12c per litre in 2027, 6c per litre in 2028, and 4c per litre in 2029, Warkworth to Te Hana is the only major project that can potentially be funded through the National Land Transport Fund anytime soon.
Additionally, correspondence from the Infrastructure Commission states that building the Roads of National Significance would double the costs of operation, maintenance, and future renewals across the entire State Highway network, which itself already has a book value of $40 billion as of 2022.
With the entire Roads of National Significance programme expected to cost $56 billion, and given all of the other cost pressures on the National Land Transport Fund including other major projects, this is clearly not sustainable.
Warkworth to Te Hana is the white elephant in the room.
In this context, we struggle to understand why the government appears intent on proceeding with a Public Private Partnership (PPP) for Warkworth to Te Hana that could require up to $12 billion of future NLTF funding. To be clear: if you were to proceed, this one project would use up all available funding headroom for any new projects across the entire transport system for the foreseeable future.
Even considered on its own merits, the proposed Warkworth to Te Hana project does not make sense. The business case work states that the project is needed for reasons of safety and resilience, benefits to Northland, and projected traffic volumes. And yet:
- This stretch of corridor is now demonstrably safer than it was, thanks to smaller scale improvements completed through the Dome Valley in 2023.
- Targeted modest resilience improvements could address the remaining concerns more quickly and affordably than the proposed brand new four-lane highway.
- Traffic growth is nowhere near close enough to justify adding an additional four lanes to this corridor, let alone in the form of a whole new highway.
- The proposed project is located entirely in the Auckland region, and doesn’t even reach Northland – and it’s not even the top priority for Northlanders, who would much rather see fixes to the Brynderwyns.
- Nor does Auckland Council want this project as currently designed, either, as clearly stated in their Transport Policy Statement. Proceeding with it will undermine the current work towards a “city deal” and Integrated Transport Plan.
The opportunity cost is too great.
We’re talking about $3.5-4 billion, which over the lifetime of the proposed PPP could potentially rise to up to $12 billion.
Why on earth would you spend all of the nation’s available transport funding on a single project nobody much really wants, to address a problem that’s largely already solved?
Especially when, for a similar level of capital investment you could solve a greater number of critical transport issues over a wider swathe of Auckland and Northland? For example, you could:
- Carry out urgent safety and resilience improvements to the existing SH1 corridor on the south side of the Brynderwyns.
- Deliver targeted and timely improvements to the rest of the current Northern Corridor (such as 2+1s, intersection improvements, town bypasses, and median barriers).
- Accelerate Auckland’s level-crossing programme, to maximise investment in CRL and other rail and road upgrades
- Accelerate the most urgent stages of the Northwest Busway, to relieve congestion and unlock the wider benefits of the improvements to Auckland’s bus and cycle networks.
We appeal to your reputation as a level-headed minister who seeks to make evidence-based and financially responsible decisions.
New Zealand needs commonsense solutions to our most pressing problems. And thanks in large part to your work around the National Infrastructure Plan, we finally have cross-party clarity and agreement on how to assess and prioritise major infrastructure projects.
If you were to now sign the country up to a PPP for Warkworth to Te Hana as currently designed, you would be actively choosing to go backwards, to a highly partisan approach that’s focused on short-term political aims, in contravention of the evidence and against the greater good.
Shackling our transport funding to this one project would also hamstring our ability to pay for necessary transport infrastructure, adapt to climate change, and respond to the increasingly costly impacts of extreme weather across the motu – clear examples of which we see happening around us, as we write.
After decades of political back-and-forth, we finally have the opportunity for genuinely rational cross-party consensus on major infrastructure projects. And right now, the power lies with you to ensure this chance for a better approach is cemented across all areas of government.
Please pause the PPP process for Warkworth to Te Hana, and bring your counterparts to the table for a smarter conversation about how to best maximise our transport investment.
We are trusting you to lead the way, and make decisions that future generations will applaud.
Kind regards,
Greater Auckland
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Header image by Lynn Grieveson (CC) via Newsroom.
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I know I’ll get roasted, but Warkworth to Te Hana doesn’t seem like that bad a project to me. It replaces the most dangerous and slowest part of the main road to Northland. 4 lanes past there would be crazy though.
Northland is such a nice part of the country, making it more accessible to Auckland would have to improve its economy significantly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather they spent that $4 billion on light rail…
“4 lanes past there would be crazy though.”
That’s why it is a bad project. There is no need, at such huge cost, to TRIPLE capacity (4+2) on such a low volume route. The opportunity cost is way too high. There are many way better balanced solutions.
SH1 in Northland obviously needs improving, but not tripling. This is ideological madness. Duplicating an at times vulnerable and at times unsafe road with double the capacity is wild over-kill.
For a government that is so sure we can barely afford to keep the lights on our hospitals, or to house the most vulnerable, this is extraordinarily lavish platinum-plating.
They seem to lose all judgement over tarmac.
The same also would apply to the Otaki to north of Levin expressway. It had a BCR of around 0.40. Yet it bypasses two sections of state highway with high safety records and have been controversial due to speed limit reversals (now re-reversed under new NZTA rules).
The road realignment was necessary, but the four-lanes just adds hundreds of millions of extra costs.
I second that! Bring on the extension to the mighty North. Northland could be SO MUCH more with a closer, better connection to Auckland and beyond. Imagine telling Northlanders, sorry but the traffic volumes will only justify this road when your grandkids start to drive…Get me wrong, I would not spend $4 on light rail, and put this into a strong road to Northland.
Seems like both you and Jimbo didn’t read the actual post? Nothing in it is against improving the connection to Northland, the objection is that there are better places to target and more cheaply than what is proposed for Warkworth to Te Hana.
Warkworth to Te Hana is also entirely in the Auckland Region. The opportunity cost of doing it likely means nothing else will happen for the foreseeable future in the rest of the route going north.
If we really want Northland to succeed, we need to target solutions on the problematic areas, rather than ramming through an overscoped four laned road that doesn’t address any of the key problems!
‘Please give us the entire countries roading budget for one section of our road please and thank you.’
while you’re at it, you should apologise for taking so long to give us all your money
Why only target the Warkworth to Te Hana RoNS? Contracts for about $1.77bn are due to be signed on the 16km Cambridge-Piarere RoNS at the end of the year. Current journey time is only 12min, so there won’t be much of a saving and for safety it’d be much quicker just to complete the lane segregation. Since the roundabout has been built there has been far less congestion and $1.77bn could be much better spent.
12 minutes, possibly blowing out to triple this in holiday season!
oh no! So… 20 minutes congestion on the busiest days of the year? Shock horror!
20 minutes? That’s not congestion. Exeter bypass on a 1960s bank holiday weekend. Now that’s congestion!
holiday congestion should not be given a thought in road upgrades, people have choices on when to travel in the holiday season, if you choose to travel during the busy times, you have yourself and all the others sitting infront/behind you to blame.
2+1-ing SH2 from Pōkeno to Paeroa (or even Mangatarata roundabout) would be a much better use of funds.
There are bits of this road that have had the 2+1 treatment and they are smooth, safe and modern. Even on public holidays they work fine.
There are other bits, unimproved since they were built which are wiggly, congested and unsafe. On public holidays you see accidents, often nasty ones.
There was a plan to upgrade all of SH2 to this 2+1 standard, but it seems to have vanished from NZTA’s agenda, subsumed by the dogma of: “If it ain’t four lanes, it’s not happening”.
They should bring SH2+1 back to life.
Yes, if the RONS programme was investigating these options for all SH’s across NZ then I’m sure there would be much greater support from all of NZ inc. NZTA have the data, they know the worst safety roads in NZ. Put that evidence into best practice, targeted improvements all over NZ.
Well articulated and a strong case for reviewing this project. I agree that a) smaller chunks of money could be spent just on improving the two key pinch points (Dome V and Brynderwyns northbound), and b) the bulk of the money is far better spent elsewhere (in my opinion accelerating the level crossing programme is crucial to keep the city flowing and also enable higher train densities).
The National party say they are better managers of the economy and that they make good decisions that will grow our GDP. But when they are not transparent, hide information and don’t give the benefits and costs of projects then I wonder if they want the best fo NZ.
I’m sick of this anti Warkworth to Te Hana rubbish it seems this blog can’t go a week without moaning about it. (They know it’s going to happen too which is the weird bit) This blog is not in the slightest bit interested in improving things for the north and it shows. They provide no evidence of an alternative just pure reckons, worse still they support evidence based speed limits which means it’ll be a slow 70/30 crawl to the north if this project isn’t built. Suck it up and realise we need this road the north is crying out for this don’t stop it!
Read the article.
Warkworth to Te Hana uses up all the transport money and guarantees that no improvements can be made anywhere else.
It’s like putting all your road impovement eggs in one solid platinum basket.
Do you really think it is reasonable to suggest a 4 lane grade separated 10s of billions of dollars expressway from Auckland to Whangarei?
It’s insane how people have lost their grasp on how much money that is. A correctly scaled list of bypassed, median barriers and passing lanes could be delivered in short time for little money in comparison.
I’m not from northland so I don’t have any examples from there.
Yesterday there was flooding across SH1 north of Pukeuri in Otago closing it.
It happens here regularly, and is completely avoidable, the road needs built up by 2 meters and some big culverts put in. A couple million dollars. Very little spend and we would buy apreciable resilience. This won’t happen because all capex from our road taxes are being spent on building and maintaining a couple sections of highway which I might never see.
It’s the worst piece of spending on transport infrastructure in my lifetime, so it’s entirely reasonable for a blog focused on transport in Auckland to be giving it a lot of attention.
Lets get it built!
This is a wonderful, reasoned and logical argument. Of course you’re right. Of course what you say makes sense.
But, depressingly, I think you have the politics and political motivations all wrong for this project and other Rons. These projects exist to feed donors and political supporters. They are not being pushed to rationally best improve our transport system or rationally best use limited dollars. They are a way to transfer taxpayers money to groups that supported this govt and to whom they now “owe”. This govt will window dress its motivations as well as it can, but I fear if you don’t see or understand this utterly fundamental driver, then a lot of your excellent logic is mistargeted.
The neglected North needs this motorway.
You need a motorway in the Auckland region more than any other investments in Northland?
A university is a more fitting tool for the future than a 1950s road.
The neglected troll needs his daily feed.
The roads of national significance are possibly not all that important to national voters anyway.
Having driven Warkworth – Te Hana and Cambridge – Piarere a few times recently, I’m happy to see work on them, as they’re unsafe and somewhat frightening, especially with traffic when raining.
4 laning is expensive. Overseas sometimes roads are rebuilt with 4 lanes in mind and modern alignment, but only two constructed initially, saving earthworks, bridges, etc. Not sure if this gets considered as an option in NZ
This is another thing. They are not planning to do work on these old roads, but build whole new parallel bypasses, leaving the old less safe roads in-invested in, to kill locals.
All the money goes on the new RoNS, the current route gets handed over to the cash-strapped local council. Stays in poor condition.
Also if the new route is tolled, likely, then the old route remains used by even more.
Remember, they are not offering to build the Mway any time soon, only to sent out geotech engineers into untamed bush like Lewis and Clark to find out what the geology and soils are like to carve huge chunks out of the hills.
Plenty of money down the drain when they find the construction is unaffordable.
The fair and open option is to put all the RoNS to the NIC, for the same treatment as all the other capital investment projects, and see where any may fit into the NIP. Most could probably be rescoped to be much cheaper and some be worth investment at some time in the Plan. We could then also dump the silly projects that could not be afforded and stop having to argue about them.
Would the donors want their promised election funding back? Or might they support any party that offers to subject these projects to the same rigour as all the others in the NIP?