by Gareth Hughes
The Herald reported today that the business case for the Auckland CBD rail loop will not be released until December. This suggests that the government may be planning not to fund the loop and so they’re holding the news back until the silly season.
Dropping a big piece of bad news just before Christmas is a classic tactic that Muldoonist government’s use to avoid public scrutiny of their decisions. It works because by that time of year Parliament isn’t sitting and most journalists and politicians are on holiday. By the time people come back in January it’s “old news” and hard to get more attention for the issue.
What I find most frustrating about this is that ARTA and Kiwirail were meant to announce the business case in mid September. That means the announcement has been delayed by 3 months. This is depressingly similar to what happened with the purchase of electric trains for Auckland – which was delayed 9 months by Joyce shilly shallying about whether or not the government would pay for it.
Meanwhile, every week it feels like we see announcements like this or this in the paper talking about another big motorway project that is being started or finished 6 months early.
It may simply be that ARTA doesn’t have the resources to get the business case finished quickly – after all they only have a total budget of $5 million to work on this project (contrast that to the $60 million Joyce has poured into investigating the Puhoi to Wellsford Holiday Highway).
The delay in announcing the business case or getting funding for the loop is a good example of the government’s crazy double standard when it comes to public transport versus motorways. They won’t even discuss how the CBD rail loop might be funded in advance of the business case being published, even though the loop is essential if we want any future expansion of the Auckland rail network to the airport & North Shore. Yet Joyce was quite happy in March, 2009 to announce a massive upgrade to SH1 between Puhoi to Wellsford, 9 months before a rough costing or business case for the project was released.
What do you think – when will the business case be released? And will the government agree to fund it?
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Environment & Resource Management by Gareth Hughes on Tue, November 9th, 2010
Tags: Auckland, steven joyce, transport
More posts by Gareth Hughes | more about Gareth Hughes
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
“every week it feels like we see announcements like this or this in the paper”
So the Greens would have let Newmarket Viaduct decay until it had to be demolished? That’s what the project was about. The Viaduct was substandard, it faced having weight limits put on it (so heavy trucks would have been diverted through Newmarket streets – very green!) which would have been ever increasing, plus it was a demonstrable seismic risk. Given the project started under the last government and is about replacing an existing structure, it can hardly be put in the same category as a “new” motorway.
Tauranga Eastern Link is a new expressway, tolled though (which manages demand) and is primarily about bypassing a risky stretch of highway and taking trucks out of Te Puke township. Nothing to do with commuters in Auckland, more a very large highway realignment that opens up new areas for housing east of Tauranga.
You’re right that Puhoi-Wellsford seems a poor value project, but the likelihood is that the underground loop is as well. Apply exactly the same evaluation technique to both and I suspect you’ll get a similarly poor answer.
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I think you will find that Joyce is simply recognising that large engineering and consulting firms around the world have become expert at underestimating costs and over estimating ridership to get projects underway.
Having got their foot in the door they simply revise costs and demand the public bodies fund the excess.
Consequently funding agencies are starting to lay down the law that they will not fund cost overruns and that they will not compensate for under ridership. HEre is a recent example:
The 5 km BART connection to the Domestic Oakland Airport (on the East Bay) was originally projected to cost $130 million and cater to more than 13,000 passengers daily. However, after a decade of delays, those forecasts have been changed to $484 million – a cost increase of say 250%, and 4,350 passengers a day – a ridership shortfall of say 60%.
The crystal balls are not getting any clearer.
Each new passenger will be supported by a subsidy of $102 – on top of the fares they pay. This is more than 10 times the original projected subsidy of $9 per new passenger.
The table below shows this the Oakland Airport rail link is clearly a project that should never be started.
Even the “rapid transit” speed will not be delivered.
BART DERAILED
Ridership Cost Speed BART debt
Original 13,540 $130M 45 mph $0M
Current 4,350 $484M 27 mph $105M
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