A few initial thoughts on National’s transport plans for Wellington, from a fresh new author on The Eye of the Fish – Captain Haddock.
Captain Haddock writes: “This morning National have released their transport policy. With regards to Wellington there are 3 or 4 notable points
Cancelling Bus improvements In this morning’s Post, Chris Bishop is saying “the focus should be [on] better buses for Wellington”. Yet, National is completely unwilling to fund this, instead saying they’ll throw up their hands and leave that to councils. National is saying, if you want better buses, be prepared for higher rates. This is a huge change from current plans. The next tranche of projects to kick off are all around bus priority, majority funded by central government. National is pulling the pin on suburban commuters from Karori to Kilbirnie. It’s also a big change for National – the Key government was of course planning some form of Bus Rapid Transit alongside it’s four lanes to the planes policy. It’s a hard shift from the more pragmatic Key and English years Despite directly saying this is where the focus should be, National would not spend a single cent on bus improvements for Wellington. With a dedicated cycleway through Mt Vic, National will spend infinitely more for bikes than buses in Wellington. It’ll be left up to ratepayers to fund any bus improvements.
Fantasy financials The cost estimates for National’s plan are in fiscal fantasy land. Apparently a second Mt Vic tunnel and Petone to Grenada will cost 4 billion. At the same time, four lane motorways from Whangarei to Tauranga will only cost 6 billion, ie. 50% more than an 800 metre tunnel and a suburban link road. To make any of these numbers work, they’ve turned the clock back, using old numbers. I get it, conservative parties like the past. But this is ludicrous. These numbers come from a dart board.
Speculative timeframes In the same Post article, National is saying they’d begin constructing a second Mt Vic tunnel next year. This is not the tunnel Waka Kotahi is currently planning but an altogether new one. It will be designed, consented, and build partners found in the 14 months that National may have between the Election and the end of next year. It will go through the Town Belt, an area protected by it’s own specific legislation. For National to do this, they will have to work about 3 or 4 times the pace of the Key/English government, with a bunch of inexperienced Ministers and a rowdy coalition partner. Not plausible.
Rapid Transit Dead. This plan kills rapid transit in favour of suburban roads. This is not a particularly surprising move from National. But with no bus improvements this is much more ideological than the Key/English government who planned Bus Rapid Transit.
What National gets right Let’s Get Wellington Moving hasn’t delivered. Calling this out is worthwhile. State Highway improvements should be fully funded by the government. That too is correct.
Conclusion Whether or not you support the high level pieces of this policy, the detail is deeply concerning. The costs and timeframes are dishonest, as is the pretense to care about buses. It’s all scramble, no lolly
Welcome along Captain Haddock – he was always my favourite character from Tintin – and thank you so much for the post. Perfectly timed, I just haven’t had much chance to write posts lately, been kinda busy on another project. Hope you are OK with the choice of photos?
I hate writing about things I don’t like – hence why I don’t write about badly designed buildings (mostly) or poor quality politicians (sadly, that covers most of them). So far, let me just say that of all the possible Chris, I find Luxon just so bland and boring, vs Bishop who comes across as actively stupid and boring. Hipkins – seems honest and not patronising to me, unlike your predecessor. Simeon, or Simian, the less said, the better. I’ll stop now…
Thanks for the welcome Nemo! Simeon takes tge cake for me :)
“With a dedicated cycleway through Mt Vic” I don’t think that part of the bizarre National transport plan.
They plan a cycling overpass at the Basin, not a cycling tunnel under Mt Vic.
I couldn’t quite make it out from this. “It will provide two lanes for traffic travelling east towards the city’s airport, and the original, century-old tunnel will carry two lanes of traffic to the city. A pedestrian and cycleway will be built above the road, separated from traffic in the new underpass”
The $24 billion includes starting work on the Waitemata crossing. Cuckoo land. It’ll be $50 billion. Easy.
But one thing that does make sense with their policy is having 4 traffic lanes through Mt Vic. LGWM’s plan of building a new 4 lane tunnel just to add a 2 lane busway and a shared path is really wasteful.
I think it would be better for the 20-30 buses per hour heading to/from the Eastern Bloc to share a traffic lane through the tunnel, and then have their own lanes outside it. Where space is scarce – i.e. through a tunnel – we all have to compromise.
LGWM’s selling of the tunnel as a “new 4 lane tunnel” is accurate but misleading. I expect they do that on purpose.
It’s also diagonal and therefore expensively long. The tunnel cannot be cheaper than widening Ruahine Street.
I expect there’s some wool/eyes tricks from the left on this. Look at the Mayor’s connecting of this tunnel with light rail to Island Bay – as she did this morning. They’re different projects, unconnected beyond the need for one to cross the other at some point.
This is where the mayor misconstrued what the tunnel is for:
“Ramming through a four-lane highway and tunnel won’t win the votes of Wellingtonians who have shown consistent support for light rail in the city.”
She’s wrong. And the Nats are wrong. They’re all wrong. But who is less wrong… that’s who we should vote for.
Chico – one thing that i have never understood is the continued ignoring of the existing Bus Tunnel – I think it is brilliant. Never ever gets blocked by cars. Effectively has its own route through / past / bypassing all the horrible traffic stuck in the Mt Vic tunnel. Scary as all hell to try and walk through, so no one does. Why don’t people factor that into the plans, in a big way?
I love the bus tunnel. It lines up well with the hatatai stop, and it drops down to the city really close to courtenay place.
If only it was 2 way, and had a safe footpath.
It must surely be cheaper to build a second bus tunnel to solve the 2 way problem…?
The bus tunnel is excellent (routes to/from the east would be stuffed without it). But it has problems: one lane, as noted; and its approach through Mt Vic – narrow streets (two buses can find it difficult to pass) and two sharp right-angled bends (plus another one on the Hataitai side).
So slow speeds and a measure of unreliability, and hard to upgrade to give more capacity, e.g. where would a second tunnel go, and how would Pirie St (which does get blocked by cars/rubbish trucks/other buses) cope?
So that’s why it’s not factored into plans in a big way – it’s not up to it.
I have to say that when Simpleton Brown and Luxon were pictured standing alone by the side of the road, next to a pot hole, that this moment was the low point of their campaign. It was so unambitious, so banal, and to be honest, so fundamentally pathetic, that it was sounding like a death knell for the Nats before they even started.
But today’s announcement really is a bit of a step change in Natfullness. The move to simply abolish the LGWM is probably going to be an excellent vote winner – although fundamentally a bit stupid – because LGWM has been just such a colossal waste of time and money, with virtually nothing concrete to show for it. I say that it is stupid because it is crazy, on the one hand, to abolish something that has spent $50 million or whatever ridiculous total it has got to, with nothing to show for it. But should we continue to throw “good money after bad” ? Or is it better to cut your losses and pack it all in ? Or could we somehow invoice the incompetent people running LGWM for the last 8 years, who have succeeded in accomplishing absolutely fuck all ?
You forget what LGWM was all about. The intention was always to do absolutely nothing, because four lanes to the planes was dead when the government changed. And doing any green crap like Light Rail, Bike Lanes or Rapid Busses? Are you crazy?
Once National is back in government we are back to road building and we do not need LGWM any longer. With the added benefit that National can get brownie points for terminating that “useless” agency (it was entirely useful and successful for National hence the quotes).
Hi Ralf – can you remind me who actually set LGWM up? Was it during a Labour gov or a Nat gov? I’ve completely forgotten.
Maybe National post flyover fiasco, but Labour really put its stamp on it in 2019: https://wellington.govt.nz/news-and-events/news-and-information/our-wellington/2019/05/lgwm
LGWM was set up under National in 2016 but was :”announced” (whatever RNZ means by that seeing as it was set up earlier) in 2019 by Phil Twyford: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/494931/major-parties-offer-explanations-after-transport-policy-diversions, https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/389321/wellington-s-public-transport-system-to-get-6-point-4b-overhaul
I guess “announced” means that the programme of works was announced in 2019, not the project as a whole
National is entirely consistent when not funding any of that PT crap. Luxon has clearly stated that PT needs to pay for itself. Only roads and similar fossil fuel infrastructure (like his old buddies at Air NZ) will get tax funded subsidies.
More roads means more traffic means more roads means more traffic. This is an eternal growth machine on which National and their road construction buddies can feast forever (well, until the world burns, if you believe such nonsense). And since voters have no alternatives to driving they are dependent on that growth machine too (even the ones who know that just one more lane never ever will fix congestion).
[…] (Stuff): National’s road-building spree missing crucial climate calculations Eye of the Fish: All scramble, no lolly Stewart Sowman-Lund (Spinoff): As National hits a fiscal pothole, Labour risks running off the […]
You have got to really feel a bit sorry for the Greens when the PM’s only problem with the National Party’s plans is “where the money is coming from”
“Media: Should those roads exist? Are you against the roads or just the costing?
PM: I don’t have anything philosophically against the roading projects that they’ve announced,
and later
PM I think at the end of the day we have to accept that there does need to be a link between the *Ngauranga Gorge and the airport that is significantly more resilient than the one that we have at the moment is.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2023-07/Press%20Conference%2031%20July%202023_1.pdf
With comments like that its clear that the LGWM project is a dead man walking (individual components might survive )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FetolYNqhI
I’ll see you that, and raise you this :)..
Will be watching for any of these phrases in the next couple of months,..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ5faSm6xAg
I always thought that LGWM was about our metropolitan dietary health, and especially the need for more daily fibre. It is a rude awakening to discover that this acronym is about moving our simian friends, as they have sadly lost the use of their legs. Oh well.
Alyson – you left that clue, that special clue. Not the clue to solving transport issues or dietary fibre. But the clue that revolutionises Wellington’s secret interiors, our inner abodes, our sanctuaries, where bedrooms frame the ever elusive Grindr, Tinder or Scruff portrait- secretly snapped at 3am on a ketamine early breakfast. Yes – the design triumph that was Lurid-digs!! This will make a nice change from Stuff’s occasional article on bougie couples in monochromatic boxes hey?: “John Waters calls it “hilarious.” David Sedaris says it’s “just perfect.” Lurid Digs is quite possibly the greatest design resource on the entire Internet. This brilliant blog doesn’t deconstruct posh flats or stately mansions—my guess is that they dig through Grindr looking for the worst interiors of the erotic selfie genre. You would be shocked at the settings some of these men find appropriate for their boudoir photography, but Lurid Digs is on a mission to educate the masses—you know, in the name of good taste. Queer eye for the gay guy. Somebody had to do it.” Simeon, simin, simeone, whatever – that religious nat chap – lets get him back to Wellingtown and find the key to his elusive inner Lucid Digs…..pant……
Alyson, Tonya, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, as I am sure that you are well aware. Speaking in tongues unknown, although exactly where that tongue has been, I’m not so sure. Stuck firmly in cheeks, I’m sure, but whose cheeks? Hmmm. You wanna do a ribald race off? I’m sure I could out-camp the lot of you if I set my mind to it. Used to be a Boy Scout – camper than a row of pink tents! But Lurid Digs tickled my fancy, so to speak, although I was put off by the NSFW warning. And I am at work right now, so I had better practice Safe Text.
People say LGWM has been a waste of time but I’m not sure I agree. Transport planning needs to be long term and strategic- for example the rail corridors we rely on to keep our region moving date back to the 1800’s. To cope with inevitable growth (a lot of it likely climate refugees) long term transport planning in Wellington requires huge changes and these need to be thought through logically and rigorously rather than just blundering forward (as National plans).
The top priority is across town MRT to provide a quality PT link between the large populations north and south of the CBD (the equivalent of the motorway/ Terrace Tunnel). This should be a seamless extension of our existing rail network (happy to argue why) and the best/ cheapest option is tracksharing of rail units of different ‘weights’ / characteristics (now common overseas including Germany where I am at present). This in itself is a massive planning job since it has to integrate with our current rail network, including freight and the planned new ferry terminal.
But logical planning design ( uninterrupted ‘pendulum’ PT corridors going from one peripheral location, across the CBD to another peripheral location) says this rail should continue to a peripheral destination. The logical location is to the east, where the most common single destination for across town travellers is- the airport-, and where our main focus for the required ‘medium density’ growth should be (not Island Bay which is just stupid). The main reason for choosing the east for medium density intensification is tsunami risk with the Hikurangi subduction zone due to fraction any time soon (on a geological time scale) and likely produce a large tsunami and kill almost everyone on the Miramar Isthmus if left as light weight, low height housing (the worst possible). The Japanese tsunami demonstrated that the infrastructure that mitigated tsunami risk the most was higher buildings of solid construction, deep foundations and ‘tsunami refuges’ on the top. This homogeneous medium density housing (up to around 5 stories) across the Miramar isthmus (rather than the current ‘shotgun’ approach) would provide all the ‘medium density’ intensifacation we are likely to need in the foreseeable future.
To supply this we need transport which requires new tunnel space across Mt Victoria. Most of this should be PT in the form of the extension of our rail network (as above) but even with the most optimistic PT share additional car capacity is also needed. So we need to be adding rail, car, cycling and pedestrian capacity across Mt Victoria. The best option, in my opinion, is a single large bore compartmentalised tunnel.
So, as you can see, logical future transport planning for Wellington is huge and complex. We don’t need to do it all as once (budget constraints mean it would need to be over many decades) but we should be working to a long term, logical ‘masterplan’. LGWM is working on this massive planning task (albeit only in a semi-competent way, but they do seem to be learning) and this should be allowed to continue, even if the government requires them to seek the additional international expertise they seem to need.
Great comment, thanks Glen, and I actually agree with most of what you have said, but alas I think that LGWM have effectively squandered their time on earth, and will be put down with a bullet to the head like a mad dog in the midday sun – and deservedly so. No organisation should expect to be able to exist on this planet for seven years and have produced nothing of substance. Nothing physically built except for some footpath corners at a few intersections, no new roads, no new tunnels, no bus shelters, nothing at all except for a crossing on the way to the airport, and that cost six times more than it needed to. If LGWM is tha answer, then someone has asked the wrong question.
What LGWM should have produced is a series of plans, starting with route explorations (which they did), and then culminating with a definitive MASTERPLAN – which they did not. They have communicated nothing definitive to the New Zealand public. What is the route for Rapid Transit? What system is it going to use? Where are the stations going to be? Where are the drawings for the neighbourhood integration of stations and route into the existing urban fabric? If we go out into the street and ask a hundred Wellingtonians what the LGWM plan is, and where it it going, and what type of Light Rail we are going to have, I doubt that we would have agreement amongst any of them, and probably no knowledge from any of them. Their ability to plan and explain is appalling.
When I lived in London, there were plans for a new Tube line, extensions to the DLR, new bus routes, planned cycle paths, etc, and the public were kept fully informed all the way. People knew where the DLR was going for years, because there would be posters and bill-boards with signs on saying “Your new DLR Station will be here in Three Years – here is how we are going to do it.” The only consultants they hired were architects, engineers, and one single hard-working graphics person, there was none of this messing around with $37million spend on KPM fucking G and De fucking Loite.
Jesus wept, they are incompetent!