Transmission Gully costs increasing at $2 million a week
April 30th, 2007 at 7:33 am by David FarrarTransit has said the cost of building Transmission Gully is increasing at $2 million a week. All the more reason to stop mucking around and get on with it. But look at how slow we are:
A transport project that took seven years from conception to fruition in New Zealand would take only two years in Australia.
NZ – the only country where consenting a road takes longer than building it.
Related posts:
- Transmission Gully
- Is Transmission Gully back on?
- Transmission Gully PPP approved
- Dom Post on Transmission Gully
April 30th, 2007 at 10:16 am
What Australian road project has taken ’2 years from concept to fruition’.
The only one that they could be thinking about is the melbourne toll road being built now.
Vote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EastLink,_Melbourne
But I have road maps from Melbourne from 1974 which show this ‘concept’ existed even then.
So 30 years is more like it.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:46 am
The billion dollar project – hell if they invest that money in the interim, they’ll be making a profit not building it…
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:28 am
So how much is it costing a week not to have the Pacific Highway upgraded?
LibertyScott has a number of posts on this and why PH vs TG is a no-brainer.
But then the pro-TG people will crap on about how much has already been invested in it already (plantings, land buy-up, geotech investigation) that it would be silly to not build it now. Rubbish – it would still be cheaper to do the PH option from scratch.
Another thing Joe Public forgets is the ongoing maintenance of TG if it were built, would cost an enourmous amount! Considering that is 4-lanes, has steep-as-f*ck gradients and the majority of the traffic they expect/want on it is trucks – it’s just out-and-out lunacy to want TG.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Seamonkey – I certainly don’t claim an expertise in TG, but I understood one of the major problems with the Coastal Highway upgrade was that under current resource management law it was considered very difficult to obtain consent.
No matter how much better it might be, if it can’t actually be built then it isn’t any better or cheaper.
Vote:April 30th, 2007 at 11:55 am
You’re right Graeme. *sigh*
We may as well lie down with a cold flannel on our foreheads and let Dunne roll out his pork-barrel project. It is truely sickening.
Especially when you take the $10 each way toll to support it into consideration, plus the fact that you would have to pay for parking in town. A grand total of $30+ just to drive in to work (plus petrol on top of that and God knows that any Govt would at least try to put a regional tax on top of that a lá the proposed 10¢ Auckland one). So thats roughly $7,200+ p.a.
Vote:OUCH
May 1st, 2007 at 12:26 am
If that’s your commute seamonkey, shift to a closer location to central wellington, or take the train, or move jobs, and stop complaining No ones forcing you to drive everyday into town.
While I believe TG is a waste of money, the economics of the whole thing should be investigated thoroughly before the $ are spent. It is not too late yet to *not* cough up the billions required to build it if better solutions can be proposed.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 5:33 am
I returned home to NZ over Christmas to find the Northern Motorway widening on Auckland’s North Shore to have made only incremental progress in the 13 months since I left NZ. This widening is to add the dedicated bus lane and associated parking and is to only a 9km stretch of the motorway. In the same period of time in the Phoenix area they have fully completed a widening from 3 to 6 lanes (each direction) from start to finish of a 14km stretch of US 60, completed another 3km of a brand new extension of the 202 (3 lanes each way) and virtually completed a full interchange where two 3 lane freeways meet each other.
I do not believe that NZ contractors are significantly inferior to their US counterparts so a combination of three things I feel explains the difference:
Vote:1. More rapid plannng permission granted – local authorities in Arizona accept more and wider freeways as an integral part of their city planning.
2. More aggressive funding – a portion of each city’s sales tax is dedicated to highway construction. This was overwhelmingly voted in favour of by Maricopa County voters. Unlike NZ, aside from federal tax increases, all city, county and state taxes must be approved at the ballot by voters before they can be enacted (some are struck down).
3. Flexible labour laws lead to through-the-night construction under lights thus considerably speeding up the construction process.
May 1st, 2007 at 7:18 am
I still don’t understand why they don’t build it like the Italians build 4-lane roads through rough and mountainous terrain. Raise it on pylons and hardly any earthworks at all.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 8:03 am
Ha.
You guys aren’t the same lot screaming for tax cuts and/or claiming that govt expenditure is inflationary?
TG is Peter Dunne’s pork barrel project. It is only being kept alive to keep him happy. It will never be built.
1. The total cost will be in excess of $2 billion by the time you add in the essential works required both north and south of the actual TG route.
2. The traffic studies show that real bottle-neck is Ngauranga Gorge. TG does not fix that.
3. More bottle necks occur at Paraparaumu, Waikanae and even Otaki. TG does not fix these.
4. TG has a hill 2.5 times as high and steeper than Ngauranga Gorge. Truck drivers will avoid it and use the existing highway instead. If you force them to use TG then tolling it as well is going to be politically unacceptable.
5. The TG route would only be used at anything like capacity for 4-5 hours per day. A dreadfully inefficient use of public funds.
The solution is to complete planned upgrades to the existing highway and remove as much commuter traffic by public transport, and local traffic with local bypasses. Much of this work is underway, is fundable and provides a progressive result within our lifetimes.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am
Kiwi In america:
I think the geography will explain the slow progress. Pheonix does not have motorways on reclaimed land by the sea. Past that I don’t know if they have issues with clay as we do in auckland.
I also remwmber the a SH1 north of Auckland, coming in under time and budget. so maybe kiwis can hold thier in regards to your third point.
Past that I agree with your other points.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 9:31 am
MaxVP,
No that is not my commute (thank God!), but it is for a portion of the coasters. So calm your undies. =)
Brian S,
The reason they don’t do it that way is because some of the motorway path is on, or near to, major and minor faultlines. In fact where a major bridge is proposed is directly across one.
RedRag raises the major issues with the TG plan in general. LibertyScott expands on these greatly. Before bitching here, please read his posts on the history and (potential) future of Transmission Gully, then come back and post. It is pointless to, unless you have the background information.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 10:59 am
“2. The traffic studies show that real bottle-neck is Ngauranga Gorge. TG does not fix that.”
I hear that all the time, but I have never experienced it. At what time of the day or week does it bottleneck?
“3. More bottle necks occur at Paraparaumu, Waikanae and even Otaki. TG does not fix these.”
Pukerua Bay has been the worst bottleneck for the last few years by far – worse than anything else between Welly & Levin. The Waikanae lights cause some delays, but only at peak hour in the evening in my experience.
The roundabout at Otaki is getting the blame for delays there, two laning it would help, as would putting “Stop/Walk” lights on the pedestrian crossing there, at the moment a steady trickle of shoppers wanders across the road causing bigger delays than the roundabout.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Pukerua Bay has been the worst bottleneck for the last few years by far – worse than anything else between Welly & Levin. The Waikanae lights cause some delays, but only at peak hour in the evening in my experience.
Last I looked the long planned bypass around Pukerua Bay was costed at about $70m. Finishing the all the planned upgrades to the existing highway would cost about $350m, a fraction of the TG route and have much the same practical outcome.
As for Ngauranga Gorge…. expect delays any weekday morning from 7:30am onwards. The long-term studies show it to be the critical bottleneck. Again a long-planned route from Grenada to Horokiwi would divert about 25% of the traffic…but it will never be funded if TG sucks the regional road funding dry for several decades.
A lot of Wellingtonians have rather uncritically accepted that somehow the TG highway will solve all the traffic problems in the region…but on closer examination the it does nothing of the sort. This is why the professionals at Transit never backed it, the return on the investment was so low….and the hell of it is that sometimes the technocrats DO know what they are talking about.
Vote:May 1st, 2007 at 10:31 pm
“Last I looked the long planned bypass around Pukerua Bay was costed at about $70m. ”
Problem is, the dodgy local council has sold the land earmarked for a bypass for a subdivision. WTF? How was that allowed to happen?
“As for Ngauranga Gorge…. expect delays any weekday morning from 7:30am onwards. The long-term studies show it to be the critical bottleneck. Again a long-planned route from Grenada to Horokiwi would divert about 25% of the traffic…”
They need to build that bit FIRST!
Vote:May 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
What a brainless strawman.
A billion dollars doesn’t exist, but not spending it on one pet project means that it is inflationary on that project (above the rate of inflation!!).
So in summary:
1. You make most of that $2m a week in interest from NOT spending it.
2. After spending the $1b on Transmission Gully you don’t get a rate of return that would cover inflation, let alone comparable to leaving the money in the bank.
3. The money doesn’t exist or at least is not in government sector hands, it needs to be taken from the public, so the only people “losing” are the public NOT paying extra taxes to pay for this thing.
The key point the TG crowd forget is that it is an absolutely crap project in benefit/cost terms – it is cheaper to bear the costs of congestion (which is on average low), particularly since the safety case is largely gone after the median barrier along the coast is built.
Redrag is dead right (dare I say). This is a swap for Peter Dunne’s support on confidence and supply.
Fortunately the Kapiti Western Link Road looks like it is moving ahead – which will help address the chronic congestion through Paraparaumu.
There is money set aside for upgrading transport on the Western Corridor – I understand agreement has been reached on the public transport component first, which is good. The next road projects after the median barrier is completed should be:
1. Get started in investigation and designation for the Petone-Grenada link to better connect Porirua and the Hutt.
2. Move on the Pukerua Bay Bypass (the route is largely intact, and this bypass will deliver enormous benefits relatively quickly).
3. Start investigating an interchange at Paekakariki – some serious options needed here, including probably moving Steam Incorporated near to the tram museum (makes a whole lot of sense) and extending four lanes from Mackays Crossing to the coast south of Paekakariki.
After that you have the really expensive difficult section, but the part that remains has no intersections, a median barrier along its length, and the access problems along the rest of the route are fixed.
Transmission Gully is a good headline, but it is a cargo cult – all it promises is an enormous margin for a construction firm and property developers on the coast – oh and an extra petrol tax to pay for it.
Vote: