Five and a half BILLION on potholes. There, I’ve said it again. Barmy. The Minister looks like a schoolboy and appears to have an obsession with cars and potholes. Stuff says: “It earmarked $5.5bn specifically for potholes – a significant increase compared to spending in the previous program – alongside $8.6 billion to state highway and local road improvements, $6.4 billion for public transport, and $4.6 billion into maintenance.” Simon also has several lists. One of these is headed Major public transport projects, and consists solely of:
- Completion of the City Rail Link – Auckland trains
- Eastern Busway – Auckland buses
- Northwest Rapid Transit Corridor – Auckland buses
- Airport to Botany Busway – Auckland buses
- Lower North Island Rail Integrated Mobility – Not exactly sure what this entails
Integrated Mobility? Is that another way of saying Underpass tunnels below the rail lines? Or an upgrade of a ticketing system? Bringing HOP to Snapper? There must be some more detail somewhere. This could be important, this possibly could even be good! But instead, the media is fixated on potholes and speed humps. What other lists does he have?
The Roads of National Significance listed in the NLTP are:
- Alternative to Brynderwyns
- Whangārei to Port Marsden
- Warkworth to Wellsford
- Cambridge to Piarere
- Tauriko West State Highway 29
- Mill Road
- East West Link
- Hamilton Southern Links
- Petone to Grenada Link Road and the Cross Valley Link – Wellington (well, Hutt)
- North West Alternative State Highway (SH16)
- Takitimu Northern Link Stage 1
- Takitimu Northern Link Stage 2
- Hawke’s Bay Expressway
- Ōtaki to North of Levin – Wellington (well, helping you leave Wellington)
- Second Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve upgrade – Wellington – actually real Wellington!!!
- Hope Bypass – that says it all really. I’ve lost hope, and my Hope has got a bypass.
- Belfast to Pegasus Motorway and Woodend Bypass
And then after that, he has yet another list, goodness me, is there no start to this boy’s brilliance?:
The Roads of Regional Significance listed in the NLTP are:
- Penlink
- State Highway 1/29 Intersection
- Canterbury Package – Rural Intersections
- Waihoehoe Road
- State Highway 58 Improvements Stage 2 – Wellington (sort of – actually Hutt / Porirua)
- Canterbury Package – Rolleston Upgrade
- State Highway 1 Papakura to Drury Improvements
- State Highway 2 Melling Transport Improvements
- Canterbury Package – Halswell
- Second Ashburton Bridge
- Queenstown Package
So that’s the National Party / Coalition Government / Simeon Brown plan for the country, and obviously the package worth $6.4 billion earmarked for Wellington, formerly known as Let’s Get Wellington Moving, is now defunct, and that money has all gone away. The tiny dregs of memory of that are now called “Basin Reserve upgrade” and a “Second Mt Victoria Tunnel”. You can bet that the tunnel as planned will probably now be only for cars and trucks, certainly not for public transport, and maybe not even an upgrade for walking or cycling. And I’m picking probably won’t be starting any time soon. So my one question is, what exactly is this “Upgrade”? Is that just fiddling round the edges? Will they actually fix the Basin? Or put a plug in the Basin?
So, apart from a new tunnel full of cars, and a minimum amount of work on something at the Basin (no details what, as yet), the other key things from this list appears to be Petone to Grenada Link Road and the Cross Valley Link. While it occurs to me that it would be quite good having a rail route that linked these areas up, no doubt that this is aimed solely at cars and trucks. But also, under the last government, NZTA officially gave up on the Petone to Grenada Link Road, because it was too hard and cost too much. Like, literally, they really could not figure out how to do it without actually moving half an entire mountain, and it would have been the most expensive project on the planet on a per metre basis. Interesting to see that it is back on the list – my money is on it never being started, let alone completed. Bets are on!
Post-script note: I’ve just found the official NZ Government graphic for the NZTA works in the lower North Island – this may go some way to explaining why everything is such a shit-show ! Introducing, the most confusing, least informative, terribly designed graphic you may ever see !!!
Second Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve upgrade – $1 billion-plus in next 10 years (Wellington)
2024-27 design and consenting, CONSTRUCTION
2027-30 CONSTRUCTION
2030-34 CONSTRUCTION
Petone to Grenada Link Road and the Cross Valley Link – $1 billion-plus in next 10 years (Wellington)
2024-27 project development, route protection
2027-30 route protection, design and consenting, CONSTRUCTION
2030-34 design and consenting, CONSTRUCTION
Lower north island rail improvements (includes new passenger rolling stock for the Wairarapa and Manawatu lines and related network infrastructure)
I personally put these $33B in the balance with the mere $3B the defunct ferry deal gave to the country: an mostly (because hybrid) sustainable and reliable rail link between the two islands. But of course this government is all in on cars and planes. While the former is slowly going electric, the latter has no plan to become sustainable, and is even excluded from the ETS. In a nutshell, it couldn’t give a rat’s ass about climate change. Oh and that doesn’t even take in consideration emissions from construction of these roads.
The cancelling of the Ferry deal was a rookie mistake by Nicola Willis – very silly piece of grandstanding and short-term political stunt by National. Screwed our country royally for decades to come. And, what’s the bet that we will end up buying yet another worn out old Channel tugboat and tarting it up until the propeller falls off again, for about what we would have paid for two new ferries anyway. Going to be interesting to see this week with Luxon in Korea, if the western press (or the South Korean press, who probably toe the line a bit more), actually ask Luxon some tricky questions over the cancelled ferry deal.
Highly unlikely. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/527022/maritime-union-disgusted-and-angry-ferry-talks-not-on-christopher-luxon-s-agenda-during-south-korea-trip
electric cars use roads, as do hydrogen trucks
I will not take the opposite side of that Petone Grenada bet as I agree that it won’t get done
I just want the fecking stupid 80km/h limit taken off SH2 Featherston to Masterton – road’s straighter than Tom Cruise pretends he is
I’m sure that speed upgrade will be coming pronto, once boy wonder turns 15 and gets his license… and the Napier Taupo road also ! Irritating for the whole thing to be 80k – definitely needed on many corners, but definitely not needed on many straights! Tom Cruise included!
Speaking of the Boy Wonder.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/transport-minister-simeon-brown-posts-video-to-dispel-weird-rumours-that-he-cant-drive/VDYFKSPLPFC35GL4O7OPTBLJWA/
His tone indicates he has taken this rumour rather personally. :D
I had a friend at high school who was a year older than me, and more than a foot less tall than me. He got his license on the day that he turned 15 years old, in his Mum’s Hillman Imp (perfect size and name for him) and basically has not got out of his car since. The car was such a key part of his identity as a male human being in New Zealand, that he could not be separated from it (only recently, he has turned to cycling, and is now a fully fledged MAMIL….).
Basically I think of Simeon in this way – a small boy in long pants and a massive insecurity complex, needing a big car, a fast car, a loud car, to show off to the girls and declare to the world “I am a MAN”. There are many people like that in NZ. To say that he can’t drive is to deny him his manhood. Literally (sorry, figuratively) you are cutting off his penis.
“the package worth $6.4 billion earmarked for Wellington, formerly known as Let’s Get Wellington Moving, is now defunct, and that money has all gone away. ”
The LGWM money was never there as a single capital contribution……..
Below is from the 2021 NTLP document It was a central government spend of $3.8 billion but over 20 years, (out to 41/42), so that’s basically $100 million a year, – heavily hinting that there was likely lots of loan financing,
“The GPS 2021 has an investment expectation of $3.8 billion from the National Land Transport
Fund from 2021/22 to 2041/42, reflecting an overall split of 60:40 investment between central
and local government (subject to funding availability).”
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/planning-and-investment/nltp/2021/NLTP-2021-24.pdf
One hates potholes.
The other hates road cones.
One of them has to lose.
Are you talking about Simeon’s internal Smeagol/Gollum battle? (Simeo-gol?)
“We hates them, we does! Filthy Coneseses.”
“But the conses…they look after the workers who fixes the nasty potholes, they do.”
“Mmmm, my precious potholes!”
Of course, in Wellington we have the additional bonus feature, of breaks in the water pipes that create water features on the surface of the road, which often have a road cone put over it to announce the birth of a new fountain, and within a day or two, the leak has now gone horizontal and excavated a new pothole of its own. I think Wellington Water have announced that the crisis is now over and the breakages are now contained: Yeah, Naaah. Still there !
That’s a lot of money to spend fixing roads. Maybe it would be cheaper to build better roads to start with.
We have a long skinny variable and mountainous country with roughly the population of Sydney jammed into one corner
Making roads using the cheapest method because we are a farming and tourism generating country is what we can afford
The way to go is elaborately transformed manufacturing eg making chips and/or manufacturing tech which is weightless
https://www.seetomorrowfirst.nz/
has some examples esp b2b and SAS
If we had buttloads more money we could afford concrete roads like the US interstate grade separated roads or even decent ground stabilisation like they had trouble with under the swampy peat around Kapiti
While we would probably like to aim for being the Switzerland of the South Pacific we will probably muddle along with more people and creaking infrastructure
twczrm