If built, it will be the most expensive road ever constructed in New Zealand.
$3,500,000,000 to $4,000,000,000.
Over twice the cost per km as Transmission Gully.
And it is not a good project, by any measure.
And it’s currently being rushed towards construction, with a Public-Private Partnership contact set to be signed by July, locking in a generation of New Zealanders who’ll be paying the bill over the next few decades.
What road could possibly be this important to the nation?
Apparently, it’s Warkworth to Te Hana.
Where on earth is our most expensive road ever?
It’s 26km of four-lane expressway, which would link Warkworth (60km north of central Auckland), to…
…the tiny town of Te Hana (Population: 120), a smidge south of the Auckland/ Northland border.
Google maps, showing Whangārei at the top and Auckland at the bottom. The small town of Te Hana is noted in red, just north of Wellsford.
Note that “Warkworth to Te Hana” is just one section of the proposed $22,000,000,000 Northland Expressway – which, as explicitly specified by Simeon Brown’s transport investment policy, would ultimately take the form of a four-lane extravaganza all the way from Auckland to Whāngarei.
Note, too, that Warkworth is already connected to Te Hana, via SH1. So, this new four-lane expressway will essentially duplicate the existing road, resulting in six total lanes from Warkworth to Te Hana.
Warkworth to Te Hana indicative route map, via Waka Kotahi /NZTA.
First question: is there enough traffic to justify this?
The graph below shows traffic volumes on SH1 across the North Island, from north to south. This is older data (from 2018), but the key thing the graph shows is the relative busy-ness of different parts of SH1.
Auckland and Wellington instantly stand out as the most highly-trafficked sections of SH1.
Red signifies four-lane highways, green is two lanes, and yellow is projects that were under way in 2018, with blue being the Roads of National Significance initiated by the mid-2010s National-led government.
Now take a close look at the dotted line across the bottom of the chart. That’s the 25,000 vehicles per day threshold – which happens to be a key trigger point for the Warkworth to Te Hana business case.
As of 2018, Ōrewa to Warkworth was struggling to hit that line, and Warkworth to Whāngarei was nowhere near it.
And as of the present, still nowhere near it.
In short, this project doesn’t even stack up according to its own business case. There simply aren’t the traffic volumes required to justify needing six lanes from Warkworth to Te Hana (and beyond).
How do the costs of this road stack up?
So far, NZTA has refused to release updated costs, but working from what we already know, Warkworth to Te Hana is likely sitting at around at least $3.5-4 billion.
How does that compare to other major highway projects, both existing and proposed?
Somewhat ironically, it is one of the cheaper of the current crop of the Roads of National Significance. But it will be the most expensive road ever built per kilometre. More expensive than Penlink.
By the way, any existing estimates of the cost of this or any other roading projects will already be well out of date. The fuel crisis – in particular the issues with the availability and price of diesel – will lead to far higher costs than previously imagined.
Do the benefits even justify this road?
The 2019 Business Case for Warkworth to Te Hana stated the Benefit Cost Ratio was 0.7. Which means that for every $1 spent, New Zealand would get back… 70c. That’s not a great return on investment, and that’s when the cost was between $1.7-2.1 billion.
Remember, Warkworth to Te Hana was first announced by Steven Joyce in 2009, as the last of the original “Roads of National Significance”.
Yep, NZTA has been working on Warkworth to Te Hana for seventeen years. One more year, and it will be eligible to drink alcohol.
So, not only is the (current) sticker price of this road exorbitant, and growing, likely hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent on this project, with nothing to show for it.
Besides the costs of design and ongoing engagement, this includes significant amounts of property acquisition to secure the route. As reported by Local Matters this time last year:
Over the past couple of months NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) has purchased a further three properties along the route for the proposed Ara Tūhono – Warkworth to Te Hana motorway.
An NZTA spokesperson said there were still 55 properties to acquire –12 of these have agreements in place and are awaiting settlement.
The total property spend as at April 29 [2025] was $47,965,060.
There are 89 properties in total required for the proposed Warkworth to Te Hana motorway, which is section one of the Northland Expressway.
The total number of properties has increased (from 88) to 89 as this now includes the acquisition of an easement right, which was not previously included in the total number of properties.
And beyond what’s been spent financially, let’s also take a moment to size up the opportunity cost of all this activity over the last seventeen years.
That could have been spent delivering immediate, affordable and smart-sized solutions to issues along the entire Northland Corridor, and other highways besides.
And Warkworth to Te Hana won’t do anything whatsoever for the key issue along this corridor – the Brynderwyns, which are frequently (and increasingly) closed by slips. Under the current outsized $22,000,000,000 Northland Corridor proposal, in which decade would we see any improvements to the Brynderwyns? The 2030s? The 2040s? Or the 2050s?
Has this proposed investment been properly scrutinised?
Warkworth to Te Hana has not been through scrutiny – at least, not publicly – by the independent Te Waihanga, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission.
That’s the same agency designated by Minister of Transport, Chris Bishop, to review all future major infrastructure projects. The increased cost of which – like the $56 billion Roads of National Significance programme and related fuel tax increases – reportedly keeps Bishop “awake at night“.
However, that review function only applies to projects that receive Crown funding… which happens to exclude a lot of NZTA’s projects, including, you guessed it, Warkworth to Te Hana.
And of course that review function only comes into effect on November 1st 2026, six days before the scheduled election.
Oh yeah, and in any case it appears Warkworth to Te Hana is set to be signed off any day now – well ahead of any pesky reviews, and without any bipartisan political consultation to ensure that future governments will be confident about carrying this particularly costly can on behalf of their citizens.
Speaking of the Infrastructure Commision’s work, Warkworth to Te Hana conspicuously contravenes their findings in the National Infrastructure Plan, which called for less spending in Land Transport, and on State Highways in particular.
And that National Infrastructure Plan was lauded by all parties in Parliament. Including the National Party.
So what are we missing?
Is this road a local priority?
No.
Auckland Council, in their new and unanimously adopted Transport Policy Statement, explicitly calls out Warkworth to Te Hana in the list of projects that do not merit high priority, on the available evidence.
Auckland Council has not yet seen sufficient evidence to suggest that these projects are the highest priority investments for Auckland, nor to confirm an official position on most of them.
So not even Auckland Council is getting sufficient information about this project to justify its existence, let alone an urgent pre-election kick-off.
And Mayor of Auckland Wayne Brown has called for cheaper alternatives.
So why on earth is New Zealand – or more specifically, the current coalition government – looking to spend at least $3.5-4 billion on such a badly scoped project?
Is this project seriously going to happen?
Unfortunately, yes, probably, although this is not completely confirmed yet.
If it’s going to happen, it is not for any good reason – as laid out above – but because of two factors:
- There is substantial momentum behind it
- The government, and especially the National Party, have no other major infrastructure projects they can actually start, in order to say they’ve started something
Given the seventeen years of momentum plodding towards this project, NZTA (New Zealand’s nominally politically independent and evidence-led transport delivery agency) is geared towards doing this project.
And it seems that NZTA, for reasons best known to themselves, wants to build the big four-lane expressway option.
The business case for the 2015 Pūhoi to Wellsford RoNS landed on ‘offline’ (i.e. entirely new and duplicate roads) as the preferred option between Warkworth and Wellsford (/Te Hana).
And between 2017 and 2023, NZTA continued work on the Warkworth to Te Hana project, through two Labour-led governments. This resulted in route protection in 2020 for a four-lane expressway. including an 850m tunnel.
As Matt wrote back then, on the question of “shovel-ready projects”:
Just because we can build something doesn’t mean we should build it. The agency say: “Currently construction remains at least 10 years away and, if delivered in a single stage, will take five to seven years to complete“.
What concerns me is over the last decade we’ve increasingly seen, across multiple administrations, governments develop a habit of turning up to the agency looking for “shovel ready” projects to provide stimulus.
Therefore having this massive project designed and consented increases the chance it will be included in a package when the government is looking for something to do.
The problem with that is it would suck a huge amount of funding away from a large number of more valuable projects that could be built instead.
So, NZTA has continually worked on this project for 17 years now, despite the very different political direction provided in the Government Policy Statements of 2018 and 2021, which aimed to shift priorities away from mega-motorways. Again from Matt, writing in 2020:
What about the GPS?
The government have made a start, in shifting our transport policy away from building mega-motorway projects, although not completely. It’s hard to see how this project would comply with both the current and especially the draft 2021 Government Policy Statement. This is particularly the case on measures such as value for money – and given this, I can’t help but wonder why the agency have continued to pursue it. It has all the hallmarks of the highway engineers ignoring policy and continuing on with business as usual regardless.
How many more smaller safety projects could the NZTA have pursued if they had[n’t] tied up a lot of resource pushing this project through? Also, how many other projects are the NZTA secretly pushing ahead with, waiting for a government with less balanced priorities?
So here we are. Almost two decades of remorseless institutional momentum makes this project seem unstoppable.
Despite a solid six years of political pushback from those elected to lead us, as was the case between 2017-2023.
And despite significant changes over that time in the local and global context – not least the climate crisis, the fuel crisis, and our understanding of how these things are connected and are not good, but also, our growing awareness of the infrastructure imbalance and the needs of the nation as a whole.
On face value, the current Government seems set to push this project over the line, in the teeth of the evidence.
Why? Do they feel they have no other option?
Because this is the only major physical infrastructure promise the National Party has made, they they have any chance of keeping? Regardless of whether we can afford it?
The wider tragedy is that, as a direct result of Simeon Brown’s 2024 Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, the rest of the transport project pipeline has been completely gutted. Millions upon millions of our precious dollars were funnelled away from things like small-town public transport, multi-modal upgrades, and local road safety improvements…
…towards a shiny campaign of gold-plated Roads of National Significance. And the only one which ever had even a hope of getting under way was Warkworth to Te Hana. So off we go.
The proposed interchange for Warkworth, located nearby, will be large than the town it is serving. (design area superimposed on the township)
Who’ll pay for this political vanity project?
It turns out, the only way the Government can feasibly finance this one precious road is by signing us up to a multi-decade Public-Private Partnership.
So, not only are we about to sink billions into the most expensive road ever built in New Zealand (so far), we’ll be paying a premium for the privilege. It’s basically a pay-day loan for a pointless project.
And that makes it all the more tragic when the good people of Northland earnestly offer to “pay their share” via tolls.
The numbers are brutally clear – as Matt wrote in March, user-pays won’t even come close to contributing even a fraction of what this road will cost us. All of the money collected by a toll might only pay for one or two years of the costs of a PPP that will run for a minimum of 35 years. (Into the 2060s, for those counting along at home.)
Instead, the road will largely be funded from general Fuel Tax and Road User Charges, meaning it will consume an enormous amount of NZTA’s funding for the foreseeable future. And that’s assuming cost blowouts don’t require direct Crown Funding – in which case, this one road would suck money out of the pool we all rely on to fund all our national infrastructure, like hospitals, schools, and more.
And remember, Warkworth to Te Hana is just one part of the proposed four-lanes-all-the-way Northland Expressway, which if built would cost 10% of the country’s entire infrastructure budget (schools, hospitals, defence, the lot) for 25 years, which raises urgent questions about what’s actually essential, and what’s just a nice to have.
Is this going to happen?
Will the government reconsider?
It would be surprising, indeed shocking, if the government were to blunder onward with this increasingly untenable course of action.
And so it has been interesting to see that, for some reason, Warkworth to Te Hana appears not to have been signed yet. Supposedly, the PPP deal was going to happen by February.
Chris Bishop, has also expressed a lot of concern on the cost of the RoNS in general.
This gives the government the breathing room it needs to step back, show good governance, and reassess Warkworth to Te Hana.
For two reasons.
First, the fuel crisis. This will be wreaking havoc on construction costs, and so scaling back to something normal-sized is both realistic, and fiscally prudent.
Second, the National Infrastructure Plan. This has wide cross-party support in Parliament. And it explicitly calls for less spending on state highways, and right-sizing of mega-projects.
Chris Bishop, and the government, have the path to gracefully step back from this project.
And, the opposition needs to let him. In fact, they should encourage and support this direction.
Labour and the Greens need to publicly call for the government to step back from this. Arguably, they should refuse to honour any PPP signed, for all the reasons above.
But they should also commit to working to a right-sized solution:
- 2+1 upgrades, on the existing road where possible
- Fixes to the Brynderwyns
- Median barriers
- Intersection improvements.
Normal-sized safety and resilience works that can be delivered quickly and effectively.
Because this project, as proposed, doesn’t make sense. The process doesn’t make sense. Nothing about it stacks up.
Choosing wisely not to go ahead with this project is the choice that really matters, if this government wants to show us they can actually do better on infrastructure.
And so:
- We call on the coalition government to take a prudent approach and hold off signing New Zealand up to a project of such scale, that is clearly not fit for purpose at this time.
- We ask the government to follow the general recommendations of the Infrastructure Commission in the National Infrastructure Plan, which they wholeheartedly supported, and look into right-sizing this project.
- Will the government pivot to progressing the normal, realistic safety and resilience solutions that Northland – and New Zealand as a whole – actually needs?
We also ask opposition parties for a clear statement of intent on this project.
- Do you support the Warkworth to Te Hana project as planned and budgeted, a potentially 35-year PPP for four lanes of expressway, at an estimated cost of at least $3.5-4bn?
- Will you push the coalition to hit pause on signing any PPP contract for Warkworth to Te Hana before the election?
- Are you prepared to work with the current government on progressing the normal realistic, safety and resilience solutions that Northland – and New Zealand – actually need?
- If elected, are you prepared to reverse any PPP for Warkworth to Te Hana rushed through by the current government?
We encourage readers to seek similar reassurances that our collective future (and our national infrastructure funding) is in good hands here. You may wish to contact:
Government
- Minister of Transport Chris Bishop: C.Bishop@ministers.govt.nz
- ACT Transport Spokesperson: Cameron.Luxton@parliament.govt.nz
- NZ First Transport and Infrastructure Committee Chair Andy Foster: Andy.Foster@parliament.govt.nz
Opposition
- Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere: Tangi.Utikere@parliament.govt.nz
- Greens Transport Spokesperson Julie Anne Genter: julieanne.genter@parliament.govt.nz
- Te Pāti Māori Transport Spokesperson Oriini Kaipara: oriini.kaiparamp@parliament.govt.nz
After all, we have the power. And it happens to be an election year, so you can bet they are listening.
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It doesn’t just duplicate the existing SH1, it triples it. From 2 lanes to 6.
This is massive unjustifiable overkill.
The current route needs improvement, especially in safety and resilience, but there is no measure by which it needs tripling. This is just ideological overkill (the RoNS doctrine needs to go), imprudence and waste.
The vast sums being blown to gold plate this random route (why here for this level of super-sizing?) could and should be used to fix flood and slip-prone State Highways all over the motu. Improving safety, travel times, and especially resilience in this new more pluvial age for communities and businesses all over the country. Wider benefits much more quickly achieved.
Instead this will be a very heavy financial millstone on the sector and the nation for decades to come.
Thank-you Connor.
+1000
Gee ,the simple solution to release the bottle neck at Wellsford is to put in a two lane bypass following the rail line .This could start at the Wharahine contractors yard rail over bridge and follow the rail line to rejoin the main road midway between Wellsford and Te Hana .Put in a roundabout at Waby valley road and one at the Mangawhai turn off north of Te HANA problem solved .I lived in Wellsford as a child and the main street was a bottle neck then so 60 years later we are still not fixing the problem .The billions saved could be used to tunnel under the brenderwyn hill the same as Johnsons hill tunnel.
The main cause of the bottleneck at Wellsford is traffic joining/leaving SH1 on/off SH16. That main junction needs to be extended north a few KM’s.
Good post. So important to point out the problem didn’t just arrive with this coalition government, extremely destructive though they are.
Much of the systemic problem lies with NZTA, who deliberately ignored the 2018 and 2021 Government Policy Statements, and kept working on projects that were not aligned.
NZTA needs to broken up. It is a bureacaracy that has become unresponsive to democratic oversight. This is an example of bureaucratic capture where a government service is more focused on special interests than it is in servicing the public. One possible remedy would be to split NZTA into 4 regional subunits.
Or split it back up into; regulator, funder, owner / manager.
Governance has to step up, and stop turning a blind eye towards constant property acquisition costs (including planting and legal costs) on the basis of “future proofing”.
It’s not future proofing anything, as it’s based on debunked and destructive transport planning that leads to further car dependence.
They used to have 2+1 in parts of SH1 before they built the Waikato expressway and they were terrible, the passing lanes caused merging issues. Probably better off doing nothing than that.
Could they just build another standard 2 lane road somewhere near it and have 2 lanes in each direction? We somehow used to build 2 lane roads all over NZ, why would a new one now cost billions?
To be fair, Dome Valley is also an ongoing resilience issue. That also doesn’t justify the entire project.
They don’t have to justify it just build it anyway problem solved.
Funny how this flippant attitude to fiscal responsibility is business as usual for the roading industry, while our other infrastructure rots into the ground. Let’s have gold plated roads leading to derelict cities.
Meanwhile, news stories are still aghast at the $5.5bn spent on the CRL….
Double standards everywhere you look. Meanwhile nobody bats an eyelid at the cost of the Auckland Airport expansion because planes = good, trains = bad.
It is, no doubt, an embarrassing road for the Gov to have on their books, and one that no amount of finger-pointing can blame the other side on – Labour ! National !! Joyce ! Brown ! Bishop !
But here is the chance for a break from all that – there is a war on in the middle east and the price of petrol and diesel is sky-rocketing – surely now is the time for Minister Bishop to put his hand up and ask for special permission to say “No, this is not the time – let’s cancel this project.” Yes, it is a total waste of $48 million, but that is a lot better than a waste of $4 billion – ie $four thousand million.
Come on Bish, swallow your pride and say “We got it wrong” and cancel this silly project. Yes, it is only money, but it is money that we simply do not have. New Zealand might even respect you more if you can admit that to the country. This is not something that we can afford and it is not something that we need. Cancel it now.
Better still, Luxon could over-ride Bishop and cancel the project giving Bish a ritual flogging on the way for promoting something of such profligate waste. A piece of political theatre all designed to promote the PM, discredit and demote a potential challenger. All promoted in the name of National the careful money manager.
You are assuming a slight majority of the public doesn’t want this road. I hate to break it to you you’re wrong, numbers are almost meaningless to most people as they just aren’t educated enough to understand what it means. They go “omg that’s so much” but then don’t really question it. So yes I agree with you this is way overpriced, but cancelling this road is political suicide they will lose 90% of the Northland vote and 100s of thousands more voters in Auckland who occasionally travel north for leisure or family.
And break it down further like I said numbers are meaningless. 120kmh vs 80kmh most of the way. I know which one the NZ public would pick time and time again if you gave them the option.
Are you open to discussing solutions, or are you happy to just outline the political difficulties as if they are unresolvable?
Well look idk really how we can replace such an important link with anything but a brand new road. I’m assuming your solution is something like a bypass of Wellsford and more median barriers and slower speed limits. People don’t want that you’re asking them to support something they don’t want.
I’m just bringing some much needed honesty to this discussion it’s great to dream but when you understand why people want the maniacs idea then you can better understand how to convince them otherwise. Writing 3 articles in the space of a couple weeks effectively saying the same thing “gold plated roads bad, more trains/PT good” is boring and people are going to lose interest.
You’re only against this because it takes money away from some big expensive PT projects you want but (if we just turned off the immigration tap) we wouldn’t really need them. Yes climate change and all the rest of it matters but none of that matters if people don’t support what you’re saying we live in a democracy at the end of the day. I can see people are getting fatigued from all the climate stuff and in about 5 years time I can see it becoming popular to remove us from the agreements even though YES I accept climate change is real but if you talk to the average person they are getting sick of hearing about it.
“The numbers don’t matter” – numbers are a big part of how these projects are sold to the public, just by being selective and not advertising the unsavoury ones. The numbers you have used to advertise the project in your comment are 80kph vs 120kph.
I hate the mutilation of the landscape with the blasting of entire hillsides.
Yes – and the interchange will destroy the town of Warkworth. Is that what the population of Warkworth want? Obviously they don’t matter but….
The diagram in the post is a bit misleading. The interchange is still freakin huge but, it is off the existing expressway, to the north of Warkworth.
Yeah, was more to show the scale of the interchange nearby, will adjust caption to make more clear
It’s easy to forget that the politicians are figureheads, they often don’t have much power to stop the momentum of these massive projects brewed up in the depths of the agencies and ministries. The ‘Three Waters’ reshuffle is still happening despite massive public opposition, and the Govt were unable to cancel iReX – though you could make the argument they only meant to reign in the massive scope creep the project was suffering from.
That being said, we need less RoNS not more RoNS, please.
The government definitely has the ability to kill this project as it requires a crown loan, a simple no from the Finance Minister would kill it instantly.
It’s not just a simple no though, because 17 years and countless $ have already been spent on this motorway. And then the people currently working on it need something else to do after it’s cancelled (unless the Govt is happy to make them jobless).
The government had no problem doing it to people involved in the Picton terminal upgrade, including a number who had relocated families and enrolled their kids in the local school.
Yeah but that’s a Kiwirail project, gutting their funding and cancelling their projects is par for the course
The SUNK COST FALLACY is the irrational tendency to continue a project based on the time, money, or effort already invested, rather than the potential for future benefits. It is a cognitive bias where, because we cannot recover past costs, we make illogical decisions to “not waste” previous investments, often resulting in greater, unnecessary losses.
Kill it NOW. Sell the properties and fix the current road.
What do you base this opinion on?
The politicians make legislation. They decide the governance arrangements and appoint the directors. They oversee what’s happening, with more access to information than public watch bodies do, and they have established accountability processes. They have both the responsibility and the tools to ensure goals are achieved.
Labour tried to shake things up, but were blind to the power of the road construction sprawl industrial complex, and its hold on NZTA, so they didn’t apply all the tools at their fingertips. National is part of the road construction sprawl industrial complex, so of course they’re choosing not to change NZTA’s culture and priorities. Rather, they’re putting them on steroids.
Because there are 10s of thousands of people who work for these government ministries and agencies besides the politicians, each person having their own individual work tasks and responsibilities, processes, etc. Leadership can’t just snap their fingers and change the behaviour of these individual workers, changing their priorities or moving them onto new projects can’t just be done on a whim, and trying to do so risks upsetting many workers down the delegated authority chain.
If you’re going to ask all the workers at NZTA to stop building roads (the main reason they exist), what will they do?
I would expect them to broaden their view of the T in NZTA.
The name says Transport, not Roads.
You’re preaching to the choir m8
+1 on the article.
If the project goes ahead now it will be a huge drain on Kiwis who have to fund it (fuel excise and/or tolls). It’s clearly not in the best interests of wellbeing/capita of NZ. The capital drain will also mean many other projects get dropped and there will be pressure on maintenance funding as well.
Governments have clearly shown they are not capable of making infrastructure decisions in the best interests of Kiwis.
Project ranking and scoping should be devolved to the Infrastructure Commission with Govt playing a governance role. e.g. has the IC maximised wellbeing per capita gains as a KPI by its choice of and ranking of projects.
This is excellent, interesting, and helpful. Thanks for the post.
My only concern is with using the fuel crisis as a basis for arguing against the project.
I interpret the Government’s position on the fuel crisis being that New Zealand will experience no shortage of fuel and soon prices will return to their previous levels. This will be why they are not specifically asking Kiwis to conserve fuel in the short run – by pooling, taking public transport, or other useful short run strategies that could make a difference.
Of course, there is some evidence people are making those changes themselves, but much more could be achieved if the government was actively encouraging this.
If the government does not expect the impact of the fuel crisis to be long-lasting, citing the fuel crisis will not help them change their minds on this boondoggle.
How strong are the other arguments? How is it that Northland has such political sway?
Great article thank you.
I am on the same page as Paul Minnett – what else might be going on? Who has been land banking up there? Who lives up there? Who thinks that they should get those pesky impoverished Māori out of the way and start selling up the whole things as a mega holiday location? (I know they already are but) Maybe even, how stable are the staff in NZTA? Is it the same blokes who have been pushing this for the last 17 years as they rose up the hierarchy? Blaming the bureaucrats may well be the whole story but that’s based on the assumption that we live in an honest and transparent democracy. Do we? Just wondering.
$22 billion for another road to Whangarei makes $12 billion for a light metro under Dominion Rd seem like the deal of the century.
The real crime is how and why NZ has become so accustomed to these astronomical costs to build basic infrastructure which is common across the rest of the world.
Also of relevance:
Northland Corridor Brynderwyn Hills alternative enters fast-track consent process
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/northland-corridor-brynderwyn-hills-alternative-enters-fast-track-process/JPXI5F2MJVH7ZFADEEGJHOWMZI/
How much damage does our current government intend to leave us with, after their pathetic term of doing less than nothing?
The original holiday highway idea for John Key to access Omaha was corrupt even back then.
Simeon Brown has had no other role than to make as many enemies as possible during this government.
He is universally disliked by almost everyone, but no doubt highly politically useful (expendable).
With a reasonable chance that oil prices will soon make it impossible to justify driving a private motor vehicle, why are we not concetrating on heavy and light rail, building a futuristic motu, instead of a stuck in the 1950s to 1970s Dawn Raiders reboot.
I suspect all of the current set of politicians have bunkers awaiting as their reputations will be destroyed by their wilful ignorance of the real problems that we suffer here in Aotearoa.
High suicide rates will not be brought down by more highways, we are excellent at killing ourselves on our roads. Loneliness will not be solved by more time on the highway (although lonely cowboy waiata could become a bigger music pool).
We are an embarrasingly drunk, suicidal race of people and we suffer from not enough people in our motu.
We have room for twenty million persons here…lets start planning how we will live with heaps more friends and neighbours!
“…..if built would cost 10% of the country’s entire infrastructure budget (schools, hospitals, defence, the lot) for 25 years…”
How can anyone who claims to be fiscally responsible look at that and not say, “Yeah, nah.”
Good article. What a crazy waste of money. The opportunity cost wasted.
It is alarming how much of NZ infrastructure development, food production costs and housing is dominated by the price of title to land. The invention of land and property law to bolster the speculative profits of colonization and the trading of ‘value’ of something almost as intangible as Bitcoin allows banks and speculators to milk the poor folk who live here.
Mortgaging the future to investors (largely offshore) has bankrupted plenty of small countries.
Why do we think it is a good idea to follow this Road to Ruin?
The new Warkworth to Te Hana route is projected to save an estimated 19 deaths and serious injuries every five years.
It’s a terrible piece of road which cant just be fixed up. Having driven it twice in the last couple of weeks, thoughts of those in the car were how good the Puhoi to Warkworth section is and how great it’d be to extend it further north.
My guess is a majority of the population would think similarly.
Cost is another discussion, and I’d wonder if just bypassing the dome valley and brenderwyns, and just building half the motorway (a 2 lane road with passing lanes every 5km), would be better.
I traveled north to Whangarei over ANZAC weekend and did not find the road or the traffic too bad. Absolutely crazy to spend this kind of money when the Hill Street intersection in Warkworth still exists in its current form.
But that’s the thing, if you had $4billion you could reduce the deaths and serious injuries on that stretch, and hundreds of km elsewhere!
Tying up all of your infrastructure spending, and importantly workforce, on one gold plated road is just mind boggling egregious.
Basically at every point in the 17 years this has been in planning, the biggest most expensive option was justified, despite there being viable alternatives (many of which are excluded with poor reasoning).
We are lacking coherent transport planning.
Planning that ranks where transport expenditure would achieve the most bang for it’s buck.
Instead we have politicians making incredibly expensive commitments based on reckons, and called in favours.
Auckland Central to Whangarei currently takes just over two hours to drive the 157k under normal conditions. (Today 6 May 2 30pm, by Google maps)
So an average speed of a very credible 76kph. A megabuck spend can only take a few minutes of this.
Providing roads for peak holiday traffic is economically totally irresponsible, but obviously has political traction with those wealthy enough to regularily traverse the route to facilitate their leisure activities.
Unquestionably, parts of this road do need some upgrades to increase resilience and for safety. But so do many many more kilometres of our roads that have an equal or even better case for such spending.
Let’s upgrade 100’s of kms of roads including this one, for the price of one short unbelievably expensive motorway.
And let’s be honest. The real cost (today) is $22bn because it won’t stop here. As the article says, its “just one section”. With each and every new section comes the “no brainer” call to keep going.
If you count s.h16 , that’s 8 lanes , Auckland to Wellsford.
If you proposed spenidng 10 % of this amount on the railway , it would be instantly written off as uneconomic. Yet it could probably 1/2 the traffic.