by frog
Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s uneconomic Puhoi-Wellsford Holiday Highway is facing some unanticipated difficulties – from the Speaker of the House and National MP whom Joyce hopes to succeed as the MP for the Rodney electorate, Lockwood Smith.
“No off-ramp for Puhoi”, read the innocuous headline on a brief story buried in [the NZ Herald].
No bad thing, you might suspect for the settlement nestled beside the muddy tidal river that curls lazily through the village, 45km north of Auckland and a minute off the highway. Why should the historic settlement be so agitated about connecting to a shiny $1.65 billion new motorway pushing past the end of the road?
“Because we’ll die otherwise,” comes the response from store owner Nick Lodewyks.
“If we don’t have an off-ramp, I’m going.”
Local MP Lockwood Smith gets into the story, I suspect much to the annoyance of his ambitious heir apparent Steven Joyce:
Heavyweights have joined the fray. National member of Parliament Lockwood Smith has put his life on the line for a couple of ramps.
Dr Smith, the district’s MP for 26 years, says further consultation is unnecessary because access for Puhoi and Mahurangi West communities “simply must happen. You can shoot me if I’m wrong on this.”
Here’s a better idea, Lockwood and Steven. Don’t argue about the cost of a couple of ramps at Puhoi – just scrap the Holiday Highway altogether.
The people of Puhoi will respect you again because their town won’t become a ghost town. And you won’t be wasting $1.7 billion, or more if you build the Puhoi ramps, on a project that has a projected benefit-cost return of only 80 cents for every dollar (of our money) you “invest”.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by frog on Sun, August 29th, 2010
Tags: ghost town, holiday highway, Lockwood Smith, Puhoi, roads, roads of national significance, steven joyce
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“You can shoot me if I’m wrong on this.”
Tempting, but I’m sure Lockwood will wiggle out of this as he did with his absolutely clear promise to resign if the National government didn’t abolish tertiary education fees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODqBmfTMoHM
Seem to recall many years ago some Labour MP assuring voters he would resign if the Whanganui railway workshops were closed. They closed. He stayed. I’m sure I could find another dozen politician’s promises anyone can buy for a dollar.
“The people of Puhoi will respect you again because their town won’t become a ghost town.”
But if Puhoi is dependent on passing traffic, as you suggest, won’t any reduction in car travel kill it? Regardless of how a reduction in traffic comes about? Are the Greens suggesting we need to keep travelling by car in order to keep Puhoi pumping?
But on a positive note, good to hear The Specials brilliant lament for the days before Thatcher came along to put the final touches to Britain’s long-running inner city decay project. You can say what you like about miserable small-minded economic policies, but they do inspire some great music.
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Sam, while I’d be the first to want to see passenger rail between Auckland and Northland, that is a long way off and a low priority as far as rail infrastructure goes.
In any case, the existing rail line doesn’t go anywhere near Puhoi, so even if there were a passenger rail service it would not service anyone traveling in Rodney south-east of Wellsford.
So from a practicable point of view, there will be substantial car traffic past Puhoi for the foreseeable future, whether the Holiday Highway is built or not.
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Curiously this is part of Transit’s Smart Growth policy package bedded in over the last few years to minimise points of access to state highways and to concentrate them at urban centres.
The areas just north of the tunnel are ready to grow because the tunnel has made them so much more accessible. So the planners who run Transit (I understand there is only one traffic or transport engineer in the whole organisation) rejected the access ramp on that side because it would stimulate growth in the rural area.
All rather strange given that the area from the tunnel to Wellsford is all within the Auckland Council.
A railway engineer once told me of a quick and dirty way to assess the efficiency of a railway line.
Just look at the tracks. If they are rusty it is not worth preserving. The present rail bed would provide an excellent route for a truck and bus only highway – using the new technology for convoying and freight management.
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I’m with Sam – great to reprise the Specials. One of my favourite lines:
“With a Nazi salute and a steel-capped boot
You follow like sheep in wolf clothes”
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back then the world was divided into two types of people…
those who thought the specials were ‘the best’…
and those who curled a lip…and viewed ‘the beat’…
..as the true wearers of the crown….
(something to do with ‘edge’…i believe…
..in that the specials were seen as recycling jamaica/white-boy-reggae..
‘the beat’ are acknowledged as … while paying homage to jamaica…
but making something ‘new’/original/’edgier’..
‘stand down margaret!’..indeed..!
there was very little co-existance between these two camps..
(i must confess to being a ‘beat-boy’..
..specials never entered my house..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Phil, “Stand Down Margaret” was great too. But I don’t think nearly 30 years down the track, given the lack of any real political impact the fightback against neo-liberal economics has made, we should be taking a sectarian position on what happened in the pop culture resistance back then.
Both The Beat and The Specials made substantial cultural contributions to raising popular consciousness of the real agenda of Thatcherism and promoting a fightback.
BTW frog, if you are doing a post on the Search and Surveillance Bill sometime soon suggest you embed The Specials’ Gangsters video in it. Tells the story far better than 30,000 words can.
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Isn’t Puhoi off the main road though? Which means that it cannot really be reliant on passing traffic.
In saying that though, I do think that there should be ramps at Puhoi – otherwise you will simply see traffic increase in Orewa again.
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It is john-ston, but only a couple of kilometres. I would be more interested in your thoughts about whether Joyce’s Holiday Highway past Puhoi should be built at all, given that it has a projected negative benefit to cost return, rather than whether it should have ramps at Puhoi.
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just the one track ‘mirror in the bathroom’ towers above anything the specials ever did…
(‘slip gently into mental illness’..indeed…!…)
their first album is unalloyed genius…
the specials are/were a reggae-covers-pub-band..
..nothing more…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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“Mirror in the Bathroom” – great song, Phil.
I agree.
Don’t agree about The Specials though, or at least about Jerry Dammers, who wrote most of their original material.
He was, and as far as I know still is, a staunch activist fighting racism and capitalism, and (like Jello Biafra from the DKs) doesn’t want to have anything to do with later incarnations of the band as he considers them sellouts to capitalism who are just in it to make a buck.
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The people of Orewa were always wanting to get rid of all the State Highway One traffic from their area so that they could turn it into a much more sedate main street.
Yes toad, I do believe that a Puhoi to Warkworth motorway should be built (note not Wellsford, although a corridor should be protected). In other parts of the world, roads that close to major cities have been upgraded to dual carriageway standard. For instance, for a hundred kilometres in each direction from Brisbane, the roads have been upgraded to dual carriageway standard or better. Further to that, the road as far as Warkworth already has an AADT of 16,000 – before long, the road will get so busy that trucks will hold traffic up behind them congesting the road far more often than a few long weekends.
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@john-ston 9:51 PM
Why not get the freight off roads and onto rail then?
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Actually Phil I WAS more of a Beat fan, and thought that Stiff Little Fingers’ version of “Doesn’t Make it Alright” eclipsed the Specials’ original. But Ghost Town and Friday Night/Saturday Morning got me more interested in them. And I was in a band called Blank Expression. But the Clash ruled them all.
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Toad, most freight trips are from the farm and forests to nearby mills, or from distribution centres to other distribution centres or to shop and factories.
Have a look the rail route between Auckland and Whangarei and you will see it runs near SH1 only between for a short length north of Wellsford.
It serves the West Coast whereas most of the origins and destinations are now on the East Coast.
Imagine you want to take the train from Auckland to Warkworth or to Orewa and have a look at where you would get off the train.
Now imagine you want to take freight to the same destinations or from those origins back to Auckland.
Self evident really.
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“I WAS more of a Beat fan, and thought that Stiff Little Fingers’ version of “Doesn’t Make it Alright” eclipsed the Specials’ original”
Well of course the Stiff Little Fingers version was better, they were the second coming of Christ (all of them), and still are on a good night (like in Auckland a couple of years ago). And, yes, The Clash are God (a scientifically proven fact), but if we are talking about 2-tone here, I’d take The Beat for ‘Head Man’s Plan’ and ‘The Fitz’, and I’d never sneer at The Specials, or The Selecter for that matter.
All the British 2-tone bands could be accused of “recycling jamaica/white-boy-reggae”, but is recycling a bad thing now? If you want the pure unadulterated ska, skip the 2-tone and head straight to Derrick Morgan, Prince Buster, Eric Morris, early Peter Tosh and Millie Small. Though I must admit, the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra would have a fair chance of taking them all down live.
Onless important matters: “there will be substantial car traffic past Puhoi for the foreseeable future” seems like an admission of defeat.
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agreed on the clash….i was an early clash-adopter..
and some prescient aussie promoter had got in early..
and had them signed up for a five-night series in a sydney theatre …
i went to three of those five…whoar….!
(do we all loathe peter frampton with a visceral intensity..?
…can we agree on something..?..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Gee thanks, phil. Now I’ve got THAT SONG stuck in my head!
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If you are questioning the cost of a $1.5 billion piece of road, then surely you would want to question the billions that would be necessary to make the North Auckland Line competitive with State Highway One. Firstly, you would need a new alignment across Auckland’s North Shore, which would itself cost a good $3 to $4 billion. Then you would need to realign much of the NAL north of Tahekeroa/Kaipara Flats. Add to that, some tunnels might need to be reworked.
Remember, the chief reason that rail doesn’t beat road to Northland is because of the alignment – the railway from Auckland to Whangarei is forty kilometres longer than State Highway One.
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With you on Peter Frampton. And surely we all love The Blue Hearts?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrwbUoZsLEc
(if only for Hiroto Komoto’s dancing!)
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