Tunnel under the Pentagon: priceless.

Anyway, here’s a little further perspective:
1 tunnel ($1.974Billion) divided by 1 Wellington Hospital ($250Million) equals 7.8… (the number of new hospitals that could be built for the cost of this tunnel)…

The difference between the two proposed schemes is the cost of building 3 hospitals (with a bit of spare change left over…)

Yes, a tunnel would be nicely tucked away below ground and out of sight and beyond the audible barrier – but are there other side effects for Mt Albert? (Apart of course from Melissa Lee’s hilarious gaffe / crime theory – build motorways in tunnels ! Reduce Crime ! )

Labour’s scheme is $2.77Billion, for a 48km stretch of road – I asked my friend Google, and got the following result: 2770 million divided by 48 = 57 708 333.3 – so ‘only’ $57Million per kilometer. I’m not sure if the Land Transport figures include the cost of importing a couple of machines…?

So, the National Party option of $1.165 billion saves $800 Million on the Labour scheme, plus, it is financed from National Land Transport Fund – MONEY THAT IS GENERATED FROM ROAD-USERS (and it should be pointed out that the total nationwide road building budget last year was $1.2 billion – which puts this project into quite some perspective!).

Why the residents of Mt Albert should be lavished with a nation’s worth of road spending is beyond me anyway, but to add extra funding – and Labour have not indicated where it is to come from – is truly beyond the pale. If it is to be borrowed, then we have extra borrowing costs. If it is from tax revenue, then in the current climate of a decade’s worth of structural deficit, we are looking at significant cuts to other social spending (education anyone? Health, who needs it?) – or perhaps even the raising of taxes.

Put it this way, Labour’s deep tunnel scheme, consumes $1,752 of my household income (if we use a simple but slightly dubious per capita calculation of $438 per NZer), for a project that i will see no benefit from? I can tell you is a significant amount of money in the today’s climate. I don’t mind the concept of social spending – but Labour have this all wrong – this is a luxury for Mt Albert that we (NZ) can ill-afford. Methinks they are sacrificing too much to win a dear seat, for the sake of sentiment and form, than actually having an eye for national interests, and this may actually come back to bite them in the run up to the next election.

But I do have a proposal for Labour (only partially tongue in cheek): the first $1.16Billion be funded from tolls on the new section of road, with the additional $800Million drawn from those local residents who would like to have the road in a deep tunnel. User-pays has never been so beautiful!