Additional Harbour Crossing back on agenda

The government has announced it is restarting the process to protect the route for an a third harbour crossing that raises a huge number of questions. Minister of Transport, Simon Bridges, has taken steps to future-proof the route for an additional Waitemata Harbour crossing in view of the rapid growth Auckland is set to undergo in the next 20 years.…
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2014 – A Year in Review Part 3 – Roads

In the third in my series of posts wrapping up the year I will look at what’s happened with roads this year. Roads of National Significance The RoNS have continued as they did last year with one notable exception. Western Ring Route The Western Ring Route works are in full flight now as will be evidenced to anyone who drives along SH16 with roadworks in place from east of Western Springs all the way through Northwest of Lincoln Rd from 5 separate projects.…
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Simon Bridges new Minister of Transport

John Key announced his new cabinet line up today and of most interest to this blog is that we have a new Minister of Transport in the form of Simon Bridges. His other portfolios of Minister of Energy and Resources and Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues could provide for some interesting synergies should he choose to explore them – our current transport system relies heavily on the use of extracted resources and is a major contributor to climate change issues.…
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Not all regional road projects bad

We recently highlighted a blog post by Rob Salmond looking at the government’s regional roads package. Rob based his post on the results of an OIA request to the minister for briefing papers he had received on the projects and noted: Five of the roading projects receive the worst kind of assessment from the officials at NZTA, an estimated benefit cost ratio of “0 to 2.”…
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$212 million in spending on roads with few benefits

A couple of days ago I received a bunch of documents from an OIA request to the NZTA on the $212 million in regional road spending announced recently. I haven’t been able to look at them yet seeing as I’m away however it looks like I’m not going to have to go through them immediately as Rob Salmond is already on the case following a similar (but not exactly the same) request to the Ministers office.…
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