Late last year NZTA announced another alignment for the Waterview Connection motorway link between Mt Roskill and State Highway 16 at Pt Chevalier. As I said at the time, the change was certainly a good one – with the project likely to take out around 160 fewer homes than the previous “May 2009 alignment“. In fact, as shown in the map below, the latest alignment is getting pretty close towards being identical to the alignment that NZTA preferred way back in 2008. The red part of the route, at its southern end, shows the only area that was originally tunnel (as per the 2008 alignment) but remains as a surface motorway in the latest scheme. This means that, unfortunately, Allan Wood Reserve will still be fairly gutted by the motorway – but it’s certainly better than the previous option where the tunnel portal was much closer to New North Road.
The area in red is about 1.14km long. The original tunnel was just over 4km long I think, while the tunnel in the most recent option will be just under 3 km long (the 2008 tunnel took a more northern alignment from memory, unfortunately NZTA seem to have deleted all traces of the previous options from their website so it’s difficult to compare). Interestingly enough, the 2008 tunnel was to be a maximum of 4 lanes wide, whereas the latest option will apparently be able to take 6 lanes of traffic in the future if required (and if NZTA widen every other motorway in Auckland to avoid bottlenecks).
So what’s the point that I am trying to make here? Well basically it comes back to the cost of these various options. The 2008 scheme was said to cost $2.77 billion, broken down into just over $2 billion for the motorway itself, $240 million for upgrades to SH16 and $400 million for ‘financing costs’ (even though NZTA’s own policies state that financing costs shouldn’t be included). The most recent option – the one with just over a kilometre less tunnel, but a wider tunnel and otherwise fairly much the same – will apparently cost only $1.4 billion (including the SH16 upgrades). So basically somehow we’ve halved the cost of this project while only really eliminating 1km of tunnel (which is surely somewhat counter-balanced in cost terms by having to build a wider tunnel). From memory the 6 lane option of the 2008 scheme was costed at $3.2 billion – so really we’re apparently saving $1.8 billion by building 1km less tunnel.
That sounds like an extraordinarily good deal, too good in fact. And it makes me suspicious that either the previous costings were enormously overblown, or this latest option has been severely under-quoted. I really do think that NZTA need to explain further how turning 1km of tunnel into 1km of surface motorway – while everything else stays basically the same – can result in a $1.8 billion cost saving, when it’s “only” going to cost around $1.1 billion to construct the remaining 2.8km (roughly) of tunnel.
The second matter which has begun to prey on my mind over the past few weeks relates to the 160 or so households that previously thought they were going to be nailed by the motorway, but no longer will be. I can’t imagine the emotional distress that these people have been through over the past 9 or so months – thinking that their house was going to be demolished to make way for this motorway and that they would have to find somewhere else to live – only to find in the end that they needn’t have worried and the motorway is going to miss them after all. Of course one would imagine their immediate reaction would be relief and perhaps jubilation, as was my reaction when I first heard of the route change, but in the end what this means is that all that emotional strain for them was completely unnecessary. And in a way, that’s even worse than if their houses did need to be taken, because the whole debacle could have been completely avoided if Steven Joyce and NZTA hadn’t been in such a rush to come up with a new alignment back in May.
A useful analogy might be that your doctor tells you that you have terminal cancer and only 6 months to live, but then three months later gets back to you to say that it was all just a mistake and they mixed up your test results with someone else’s. Of course you are jubilant, but really is what just happened OK? Chances are you’ve been put through three months of hell, that was completely unnecessary – and in a way what the doctor has done to you is even worse than if you had cancer to start with.
All up I actually think there needs to be a serious explanation of what’s gone on here. How on earth can NZTA build the latest alignment for $1.4 billion? If they can build it for that price, why did we have the unnecessary May 2009 alignment? Why weren’t NZTA given more time to come up with the best route possible for the money they had to spend (which it seems they’ve finally done, if it’s possible to build it for that cost)? Is someone going to apologise to those 160 households who went through 9 months of hell unnecessarily?
What has happened is pretty damn unacceptable in my opinion.
I got the impression that a lot of what went on back in May was an attempt to make Labour look like they had been mismanaging the project. National spent years in opposition claiming the tunnel was only being considered because it went through Helen Clark’s electorate i.e. that she was wasting money to please her constituents. When they came into power they immediately claimed the project costs had blown out, but Joyce was going to save the day with his new alignment. I’m of the opinion that a lot of this has been politicking pure and simple at the expense of affected households. Most of the costing I am sure is purely hot air, if they loaded 400 million of financing costs on the previous costings what else did they load on, and what are they leaving out of this? I personally believe that the destruction of such a huge area of parkland should have some sort of social cost that should be included on this proposal – I really thought we’d moved on from the days of bulldozing motorways through the areas of least resistance, being parks and waterfronts. But we haven’t.
If I think whats going to happen does happen then there are bigger problems. I think that the shifted motorway now covers the rail designation land. So what is now empty land designated for rail purposes will be used for the motorway so no houses are demolished for the motorway. Something very fishy is going on here. If the SAL line goes ahead one day those houses that were ‘safe’ will have to go. Can you imagine the public opposition in future? After going through all of this, then thinking their houses were safe, then being told that due to a railway line their houses will have to go anyway. Naturally the media and the uninformed public will probably direct their outrage at KiwiRail when infact it is the motorway and the current minister of transport that should have to take the blame. This rail designation has been in place before any motorway had even been thought of, before any houses were ever built there. I hope KiwiRail takes this under consideration when NZTA wants to do this, because they might get massive amounts of negative PR in future through no fault of their own.
I think all they are doing is allowing rail to look like the big bad wolf after the nice minister of roads saved their houses.
The rail designation was there first so legally it has to be protected. That is of course unless Joyce forces KiwiRail to sign it away.
It has been a balls up from start to finish (I’m sensing a trend with Joyce anyone else?)…
I’m relatively confident the rail corridor will be protected, it is very obvious a good amount of space has been left along the Mt Roskill extension it would be unbelieveably stupid to leave half a rail corridor which has expensive bridge work already built…
While it is a shame we are losing 1.2 kms of tunnel to pinch a few pennies (and the full tunnel option should be built regardless as we’ve heard the Minister say about Puhoi we don’t need to worry about cost) it could result in an adequate outcome… One of my best friends growing up had a house backing onto Alan Wood Reserve and as far as Auckland Parks go, it is a bit of a dive… If a large amount of money is spent bringing it up to a standard of a Cornwall Park or Western Springs I think it is worth losing a few acres might be a good trade off but mitigation must be excellent, anything less is as unacceptable as advising people they are going to lose their homes in error…
I’d like to see the specs of how they intend to construct the Sh16-SH20 interchange which will overlay an already extremely busy interchange as it is. If SH16 is 4 lanes at present you will have 2 lanes of the new SH20 plus the poor buggers getting on from Great North Rd will need a lane- you are potentially looking at 7 lanes of SH16 heading East. By the time you get to spagetti junction this will have narrowed down to 5 lanes so there will be a lot of lane changing going on in a relatively short amount of road.
Going West you will have exactly the same problem
Remember also- this interchange and Maioro St will be the only access points to the motorway system in this part of town.
SH16 is to be widened by one lane on each side between Western Springs and Westgate. An additional westbound lane will be added between Waterview and Rosebank Rd.
It will cost $860 million apparently. Just to widen the motorway enough to induce traffic and have the motorway ending up just as congested within a few years.
What about those householders who SOLD their properties in the meantime, at a loss? Surely there’s likely to be the odd one?
Ingolfson – Perhaps some of the savings are coming from increase property prices now that they need 160 less houses. They have mentioned in the past that they already own most of them which I’m guessing were brought under a different budget to the tunnel build as some were brought some time ago.
Yes I think that would be the case Matt. Somewhat unsurprisingly the reason the 2008 alignment was chosen because it minimised the amount of property that needed to be purchased.