$22,000,000,000 on just one road?
Last year, I posted about the challenges I faced, trying to daylight public-interest information about the government’s Roads of National Significance programme. As I wrote then, entire documents – including even titles – were being withheld on what looked to me like flimsy grounds.…
75 Comments What’s in the RoNS files?
Earlier this week, Te Waihanga, The Infrastructure Commission, called for more transparency for infrastructure investment.
I thoroughly agree. A lack of transparency, especially in mega projects, has been a hallmark of the transport sector in New Zealand – and not only is it detrimental to the public interest, it also prevents improvements to how we do infrastructure as a country.…
Who benefits from secrecy around public infrastructure?
You might have seen this video, which we received as part of a recent OIA request. It showcases the original light rail plans developed by Auckland Transport between 2014-2017.
The video was apparently produced in early 2018 by Auckland Transport, just a few months before the project was handed off to Waka Kotahi/NZTA.…
The Policy and Memory Vortex
When you start doing research into transport and urban topics and policies, one thing you realise is how messy and chaotic many government websites are. Given that these are (in theory) the most accessible version of the official archive, that’s a challenge.…
ATAP Indicative Projects Costings
In September the Final Report of the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) was released and we’ve talked about it a lot since then. It focused on strategic recommendations following multiple rounds of modelling of packages of projects and with & without Smarter Pricing.…
Waterview Mitigation Needed
We’re now only months away from the opening of New Zealand’s biggest transport project to date, the Waterview tunnels – likely to be sometime between January and March. Waterview should have represented the last major new urban highway connection in Auckland but of course the NZTA and others have since started pushing other projects such as the East-West Link and an Additional Waitemata Harbour crossing.…
East-West an ever increasing cost
I recently received back an OIA request from the NZTA on a few projects. One part of that was related to the Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing and the other which I’ll cover in this post was about the East West Link Connections.…
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