Transmission Gully Caucus
October 31st, 2005 at 7:21 am by David FarrarTo keep the pressure on the Government to fund Transmission Gully, three Wellington region based National MPs have launched a cross-party lobby group of MPs.
Despite other parties playing politics saying they support the aim, but won’t join, the main thing is that the vast majority of local MPs now seem to support Transmission Gully.
No tag for this post.
October 31st, 2005 at 8:41 am
Winnie Laban and Darren Hughes seem to have a negative view of the group. I think that the National MPs are on to a good thing here – they will be seen to be doing something for their community even though they’re only list MPs. This may hurt the Labour MPs who have rubbished it in the next election. It will be seen by the public and hopefully the media that it is National making an effort to get something worthwhile done, and Labour not playing ball.
Vote:Lets hope National puts its money where its mouth is in 3 years time.
October 31st, 2005 at 8:47 am
The entire Transmission Gully concept fails on one simple test.
Question…would YOU, yes YOU, pay a $10 toll to use the TG route, when for 20 hours out of 24, the alternative Coastal route takes the same time, does not have a sodding great hill, and is free?
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 9:06 am
“Question…would YOU, yes YOU, pay a $10 toll to use the TG route”
Quite possibly. How much time would it save?
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 9:14 am
They have been going on about this for years. Yet another expensive publically funded project for Wellington.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 9:16 am
Logix – hell yes. Avoiding an hour in traffic is worth far more than $10 to me.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 11:34 am
Hmm, a 40 minute into/out of Wellington or a 2-2 1/2 hour journey? At $10 per hour working this is worth it, for people who commute daily from Kapiti the chances are they are earning more than this.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Yup, I’d happily pay the toll, even tho my rates are already subsidising public transport, and my taxes paying for the other route.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 12:18 pm
90% of my product goes to Auckland or through this area, to add .5% per cubic meter sent, Hell Yes I would pay the $10 dollars to get the vehicle through, I already cop a 5.5% surcharge per cube to cover the extra cost of Auckland’s needs so what the hell. Tim another publicly funded project for Wellington? Hell yes, why not shows what a can do attitude can achieve. Born there, don’t live there but love visiting family and friends, has a great feel about it for at least the last 15 years. Can’t really say that about any of the other major north island cities.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Yeah but isn’t Michael Cullen always right. Logix always seems to think so anyhow.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 5:11 pm
Maybe Logix is Michael Cullen!
And bring on Transmission gully.
1- It is safe.
2- It is quicker.
3- It provides an alternative route to the existing road, so if there’s a landslide or anything, Wellington does not get cut off.
Perhaps another 5 cents a litre petrol tax will cover it.
Vote:Toll roads do not always succeed, as they may not generate enough revenue to cover the wasteful admin of collecting the toll revenue.
Think about it, the cost of staff sitting in toll booths and/or the cost of supplying an e-tag system , together with a call centre and infrastructure to send out the bills and chase after non-payers.
Tolls themselves also deter some traffic to stay on the dangerous non-toll route.
October 31st, 2005 at 6:52 pm
You all keep missing the point.
1. The TG route is likely to be only 2-3 min faster, MOST of the day. (Out of a trip time of about 20 mins.)
2. For truck drivers it will likely be SLOWER due to the long hill that is steeper than Ngarunga Gorge and 2.5 times higher.
3. If you are a peak hour commuter then yes it makes sense to use it. But then a decent train service may well serve your need just as well 80% of the time.
The key point is that for MOST of the day there will be little incentive to use it, and all the professional analysis says this project is a damm great white elephant.
Vote:October 31st, 2005 at 9:08 pm
Logix, I think it is you who are missing the point. The road out of Wellington that TG will bypass is currently inadequete for the volume of traffic that is travelling on it. Something needs to be done, either an upgrade of the existing road causing years of delays to motorists (ie look at the abysmal road building in Mana that’s been going on for years now for an example of how crap Transit are at building anything), or build the road where there is no road now. If there are stuff ups, at least the stuff ups are out of the way.
But seriously, we need people who know how to build roads to do this one. Maybe there are other options like bridges and tunnels that real engineers and designers could come up with.
When you weigh up the costs of endless delays for years on upgrading the current road vs the cost of building a new one, I bet that the uncosted delay cost for road users is not factored in. If it were, most likely the cost benefit of building TG is far higher than what is being accounted for now.
Vote:November 1st, 2005 at 1:00 am
Here we go again.
1. Transmission Gully will do nothing to make the current road safer, and the current road will still be shorter for around 40% of trips on it.
2. It is hardly any shorter than the current route.
3. It requires oodles of taxpayers – i.e. people paying income tax, not road users – money to deliver benefits worth half of the cost. Money spent on Transmission Gully would deliver a better return to the nation sitting in the bank gaining interest.
A sickening display from a National Party that once proudly defended allocating road users money to the best projects through a non-political process that ranked benefit/cost – a National Party that hates subsidies to business, a National Party that believed in user pays.
This is NOT user pays – Australian toll roads pay for themselves through tolls, this would be a toll road which people who never ever use it would pay for – a bit like how Labour used taxpayers money to pay for Air New Zealand which National criticised.
Again, I would ask, what the hell do MPs know about what are the best roads to build? In the US, a lot of road building is very politically driven, so big roads are built for marginal electorates and standards of general maintenance are very poor.
This is $1.1-$1.2 billion worth of road – that is an enormous amount of money for something that generates only half those benefits.
I have posted on this often, so I am going to post every day on my blog a bit of a history about this – because I am tired of repeating myself. Needless to say, I wonder David why you are not a great advocate for spending hundreds of millions on Wellington’s rail network – the current proposal for doing that has a benefit/cost ratio of just over 1?
Anyway, first part is on my blog now, a history up to the late 1990s, when Transit was faced with the decision about how to move forward strategically on this project, and to describe what the funding framework is. National supporters might want to remember that National supported ensuring politicians could not decide what projects could proceed or could not proceed- Maurice Williamson always, rightly, left this matter to Transfund and Transit.
Labour should do the same.
Vote:November 1st, 2005 at 3:00 am
Then maybe we could sell Air NZ to pay for it!
Vote:November 1st, 2005 at 5:30 am
Just to remind all those of you who dismiss an upgraded rail link as ineffectual; yesterday the rail was cut at Paraparaumu due to a derailment, and much of the commuter traffic it carries has been forced onto the road.
The delays were horrendous. Yes the antique, clapped out old trains we DO have, actually carry a significant load…and spending some money on them to improve their performance will only help.
Vote:November 1st, 2005 at 8:11 am
LS – the rail option has a lower benefit to cost ratio than Transmission Gully.
And the problem with leaving it to officials to decide, is that the level of funding makes it a claytons choice. I don’t advocate subsidies from the consolidated fund as much as that petrol tax go towards roading/transport not into the consolidated fund.
Vote:November 1st, 2005 at 9:14 am
This roading upgrade holds as much importance as the Auckland upgrades and should be addressed as urgent. Wellington uses its rail system and quite wisely I might add, but Aucklanders have quite clearly pointed out they are looking to the upgraded motorway system to continue with increased traffic flows, sorry but hardly an argument for increased funding. What is the ARC going to do once the motorway system is upgraded in Auckland, place tariffs on vehicles traveling into the CBD and subsidies on internal city rail
Vote:travel. This would be the only way to relieve the congestion in Auckland even with upgraded motorways. I know this sounds very green and pains me to point it out but lets get back to the facts, I am a heavy user of this stretch of highway I am happy to pay get on with it. I am already paying an increased 5.5% tariff for alternate upgrades so get on with it. I think I know the real reason there is so much opposition to this and it’s quite simple, Wellington does have a can do attitude and if they get past first base on this the project will fly and probably be in use before Auckland’s upgrade breaks ground. NZers will then realise how much money and time has been wasted in discussions on both of these projects.
November 1st, 2005 at 11:58 pm
DPF – certainly the rail option the Greens advocate does, but retaining the current rail network and replacing the rolling stock has a positive BCR. Transmission Gully has a negative one, nobody can escape that.
I agree with you that the Crown account petrol tax should go on roading, but Labour has effectively done this – for Wellington anyway.
The formula goes like this:
18.7c a litre petrol tax to the Crown account.
1c/l in petrol tax contributes $33m per annum revenue (Treasury estimate).
So $617 million per year from petrol tax that does not go into the National Land Transport Fund.
Wellington contributes about 11% of this, say $68 million p.a.
Labour has committed over the next twelve years the following to Wellington, over and above the NLTF funding:
$225 million (Wellington package 1)
$255 million (Western Corridor road/rail exc. SH1 central section)
$405 million (SH1 central section).
That is $885 million over twelve years. That is nearly $74 million a year – Wellington is getting its fuel tax money back and more. I’m not saying its a good way of doing it, but there is no argument that putting all of the fuel tax money into roading will give Wellington more.
Anyway, I’ll get to that, I’ve published part 2 of my series on Transmission Gully on my blog.
libertyscott
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