Nationals Road Policy

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D1023319

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#306518 31-Jul-2023 13:10

Stuff has published Nationals Transport policy - https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300939162/live-the-day-in-politics-monday-july-31

Excerpt

National’s Transport for the Future plan will fund four new state highway projects to unlock housing. This includes a North West alternative State Highway in Auckland, Southern links in Hamilton, Tauriko West State Highway 29 upgrade in Tauranga and the Petone to Grenada Link Road and Cross Valley Link in Lower Hutt and Wellington.
- 'scrap costly projects that are going nowhere like Auckland Light Rail and Let's Get Wellington Moving'.
- If elected, the party would build a second, wider Mt Vic tunnel in parallel to the existing one – with construction starting before 2025.
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.
Missing from the blueprint is a promise made by former leader Judith Collins to build a second Terrace Tunnel – where traffic from the urban motorway grinds to an almost instantaneous gridlock.

https://www.thepost.co.nz/a/politics/350045125/national-axe-lets-get-wellington-moving-promises-four-lanes-planes?utm_source=stuff_website&utm_medium=stuff_referral&utm_campaign=stuff_skybox&utm_id=stuff_skybox

I for one agree but what do others think?
Wellingtons Eastern and southern suburbs are almost isolated at times because of congestion

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#3110048 31-Jul-2023 13:15

Frankly, all of the parties have policies I hate (this being one of them). As a lifelong National supporter, don't think I can vote for them this year.

But I'm not sure any of the other parties are any better?

Gurezaemon

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#3110050 31-Jul-2023 13:19

Great. So we'll be able to save a few minutes getting to a hospital that has had even more of its resourcing cut to pay for the road we got there on...

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Benoire

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#3110055 31-Jul-2023 13:33

Don't believe the costings from National this year on their roading expectations. I've been in the transport sector as an engineer for 20 years now and this current round of roads first from National is the most uncosted and unrealistic thing I've ever seen. There is no analysis, no proper quantity analysis and in my experience simple projects are costing significant sums of money right now. Majority of what is required can be achieved through safe passing lanes. Remember that National increased the weight of trucks allowed on the roads and then reduced the maintenance and renewal GPS class to fund their RONS, now we're paying for that through the failure rates in our roading network.. National would likely do the same again and pass the can down the road.

tweake

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#3110058 31-Jul-2023 13:38

a lot of it is just crowd pleasing stuff that will go in the bin as soon as they are elected.

the northland roading. whangerai to marsden is great, sorely needed just for safety sake. but they have ignored the Brynderwyn hill which is a major weak spot that has repeatedly failed cutting off northland. every time its out traffic gets pushed through mangawhai, where a lot of wealthy people live (and its expanding rapidly).

a bit of a gaff that they think Wellsford and Warkworth are in northland. they are both Auckland towns. certainly a high priority project that needs to be done yesterday before Auckland runs out of room for rubbish. ie need the road so they can get all those Auckland rubbish trucks into the proposed dome landfill.

the public transport is funny as. nationals wanting "green field" housing which doesn't work with public transport. public transport only works well with high density housing. ie moving a lot of people a short distance. Auckland is all about moving a small amount of people a long distance, which makes it insanely expensive. so clearly its at odds with nationals housing policy and you can bet it will go in the bin.

rb99

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#3110103 31-Jul-2023 13:40

I wonder how much the 'donations' from the roading lobby are this time round...

Spend it on something useful, like railways, or hospitals, or Pharmac

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

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#3110107 31-Jul-2023 13:49

and they say 'other innovative funding tools'. whats that supposed to mean, not that disastrous public - private partnership...privatise the profit, socialize the risks.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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#3110108 31-Jul-2023 13:52

Moved to the Politics sub-forum.

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#3110112 31-Jul-2023 13:58

tweake:

a lot of it is just crowd pleasing stuff that will go in the bin as soon as they are elected.

the northland roading. whangerai to marsden is great, sorely needed just for safety sake. but they have ignored the Brynderwyn hill which is a major weak spot that has repeatedly failed cutting off northland. every time its out traffic gets pushed through mangawhai, where a lot of wealthy people live (and its expanding rapidly).

Having an entire part of the country vulnerable to being cut off from the rest by a heavy rainstorm on a regular basis is an embarrassment. Northland is no longer some minor appendage - it has a population comparable to Wellington City. We should be able to do better, but the NZ public is so terrified of paying taxes that we'll keep on seeing band-aid solutions to major problems.

I can see the Dome Valley being gradually 4-laned, but the Brynderwyns? The only way to resolve that absolute mess is to put a new road in around the western side of the hills, which probably will never happen because of the sheer scale of the project.

The new motorway avoiding Warkworth is wonderful, but primarily because of the Brynderwyns I still hate driving to Auckland.

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Rikkitic

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#3110113 31-Jul-2023 13:59

The more and better the roads, the more traffic will fill them up. I think this is called the Los Angeles lesson of diminishing returns. National thinks roads are the answer to everything. I wish there was an answer to National.

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SheriffNZ

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#3110116 31-Jul-2023 14:09

Rikkitic:
The more and better the roads, the more traffic will fill them up. I think this is called the Los Angeles lesson of diminishing returns. National thinks roads are the answer to everything. I wish there was an answer to National.

It's called induced demand

Gurezaemon

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#3110118 31-Jul-2023 14:15

SheriffNZ:
Rikkitic:

The more and better the roads, the more traffic will fill them up. I think this is called the Los Angeles lesson of diminishing returns. National thinks roads are the answer to everything. I wish there was an answer to National.

It's called induced demand

This illustrates it beautifully.

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tweake

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#3110120 31-Jul-2023 14:20

Gurezaemon:

Having an entire part of the country vulnerable to being cut off from the rest by a heavy rainstorm on a regular basis is an embarrassment. Northland is no longer some minor appendage - it has a population comparable to Wellington City. We should be able to do better, but the NZ public is so terrified of paying taxes that we'll keep on seeing band-aid solutions to major problems.

I can see the Dome Valley being gradually 4-laned, but the Brynderwyns? The only way to resolve that absolute mess is to put a new road in around the western side of the hills, which probably will never happen because of the sheer scale of the project.

The new motorway avoiding Warkworth is wonderful, but primarily because of the Brynderwyns I still hate driving to Auckland.

what makes it worse with the Brynderwyns is that the amount of traffic going over it is one of the lowest for SH1, most of the traffic goes to marsden or mangawhai. therefore it gets the lowest benefit to cost ratio and therefore never fixed. but they could do all the planning and just put in a 2 lane bypass then 4 lane it later on. the big thing there is you have all the land allocation done. if they wait to long they are going to have to remove a subdivision and pay out large amounts. much easier to get it done while its still farmland.

also doing the bypass, which is already in planning stage, is it also bypasses the flood prone part just south of the hills.

the whole point of RONS was to do projects that would normal never get done but had great need.

GV27

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#3110121 31-Jul-2023 14:22

D1023319:

Wellingtons Eastern and southern suburbs are almost isolated at times because of congestion

Congestion hasn't sped up or made the Light Rail West Auckland was promised in 2017 happen faster, or at all. And there's far more people looking to move into North Western Auckland (on top of the huge new suburbs that have popped up there already) than there is in Wellington full-stop.

It's a good outcome. Pledging 60% of the funding to Wellington for LGWM while making Auckland pay 50% of the CRL (including the overruns) while AT is slashing projects due to reduced funding was perverse. Even more so given Auckland was lumped with a regional fuel tax to fund things while no other region in the country got it. It's really just a tax on Auckland for living in Auckland.

I'll take National's 'probably-but-not-really' projects over the ones we've been promised in Auckland that have only created jobs for policy wonks in other parts of the country and no actual infrastructure in Auckland either way. There's not much moral high ground there.

SJB

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#3110122 31-Jul-2023 14:28

Gurezaemon:

Having an entire part of the country vulnerable to being cut off from the rest by a heavy rainstorm on a regular basis is an embarrassment. Northland is no longer some minor appendage - it has a population comparable to Wellington City.

How about half the South Island? If the dilapidated Ashburton bridge is destroyed the bottom half of the SI is effectively isolated. Cost to replace - less than a tenth of the cost of a cycling appendage to the Auckland Harbour Bridge apparently.

I'm not voting for any of these deadbeats.

ezbee

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#3110173 31-Jul-2023 18:02

There is not a lot of money in the tin with payouts needed to rebuild storm damaged roads and bridges.
So maybe constrained for new ones.

Then you add compensation for Housing/Business in areas which are not safe to rebuild.

Insurance companies will demand either very convincing expensive flood protection or building elsewhere.
We all pay for any lack of confidence by Insurance companies as their underwriters are not there to make losing bets.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/494856/government-reaches-deal-to-share-buy-out-cost-of-hawke-s-bay-cyclone-damaged-houses

Maybe more and better public transport to take cars off some roads can do as much or more for congestion for cities ?

Major InterCity Road Rail intercity links.
Sure with our increasingly challenging weather and shaky isles with many slip/fault regions.
Well getting ahead of areas that become regular washouts is a good investment.

It seems in certain areas we are running out of space to just dig deeper into the hillside as the other edge slips away.
We saw in recent storms a whole region can be cut off from emergency services etc too.
These areas sure they need doing.
Even for Buses remove the bone shaking ride, less windy tight steeply graded rough roads encourages passengers to use.

There are a lot of bills coming and not a lot of money, so how you cost and where this comes from ?

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