Tolling for a new harbour crossing
An article in the NZ Herald today raises the typical old debate of whether tolls should be introduced to fund another harbour crossing. If any issue was ever likely to raise the heckles of the North Shore, this is it:
Transport Agency consultants believe tolls of $6 to $8 could pay for a new Auckland harbour crossing.…
32 Comments $65 to Cycle across Harbour Bridge
The NZ Herald reports on a proposed cycling event in December that will enable people to cycle over the harbour bridge – if you pay the entry fee of at least $65. There are also a whole pile of weird conditions that it seems NZTA have applied to the event.…
$4 billion+ to allow heavier trucks across the Waitemata Harbour
An article in yesterday’s Herald on Sunday confirmed a suspicion that I have had for a while now: one of the primary reasons Steven Joyce is so keen on another harbour crossing (despite its absurdly high price tag and absurdly low cost-benefit ratio) is because that would make it possible for heavier trucks to get across the Waitemata.…
Council doesn’t take the bait
When NZTA released their further assessment of whether the next Waitemata Harbour Crossing should be a bridge or a tunnel (millions of dollars of public money spent on the assessment, without it even having a recommendation) I felt that the whole project really missed the point – why do we need another road-based harbour crossing?…
North Shore bus use booming
As I noted in a post a couple of days ago, there are significant overcrowding problems on many of the buses connecting the North Shore with the city centre. Auckland Council’s transport committee came up with a number of fairly urgent recommendations, while I also had my suggestions about how to improve the attractiveness of other North Shore bus services by making them easier to understand.…
North Shore rail link very popular
An interesting article in yesterday’s Herald, outlining the results of a poll into transport in Auckland:
An UMR Research poll, the results of which are out today, found 79 per cent of 241 Aucklanders in favour of installing railway lines across the harbour – whether on a new bridge or through tunnels – and 18 per cent against.…
Just what could a new Harbour Crossing look like
I have had a brief look at a few of the documents surrounding the release of the latest harbour crossing study and came across a few images of what a new bridge may look like.
First a top down view: Looks like things get pretty messy at each side where the bridge lands, so lets look at those a bit closer up, here’s the St Marys Bay side (sorry its a bit fuzzy) Wow the residents of St Marys Bay are not going to like this at all, they seem to want to extend the mess that is the CMJ right down to the waterfront and they seem to forget the whole point of the Victoria Park Tunnel was to try to minimise the impacts the motorway had on the area.…
The false assumption
Even though the cost-benefit ratio of both bridge (0.6) and tunnel (0.4) options for providing an additional crossing of the Waitemata are pathetically low, I actually think they’re an over-estimate. This is due to the same false assumption that afflicts the analysis of all future roading projects:
That traffic numbers will keep rising
If you have a look through the business case for the harbour crossings, the main justification is that – supposedly – traffic volumes will continue to rise dramatically across the harbour bridge into the future, and therefore we will need more lanes in the form of another crossing.…
Can we afford $4-6 billion for another harbour crossing?
A few days ago I showed a plan of the proposed alignments of a future Harbour Crossing: including a rail tunnel, a road tunnel and a road bridge alignment. This is included below, to refresh your memories:
The full reports by NZTA are online and can be found here.…
Next harbour crossing: bridge or tunnel?
We’ve been waiting quite some time to hear about NZTA’s latest review of whether the next Waitemata Harbour Crossing should be a bridge or a tunnel. A few years back this debate was pretty much settled, with the preferred option being a set of tunnels.…
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