New Auckland harbour crossing

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#3459184 5-Feb-2026 20:56

johno1234:

Surely where the bridge or tunnel goes is 100% determined by what it needs to hook into at each end?

That's not really how cost benefit works. If you can get 80% of the benefit at 50% of the cost for an imperfect solution then you'd probably do that.

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#3459186 5-Feb-2026 21:15

If the traffic doesn’t flow in and out you’ll get 10% of the benefit on the rare association it’s not grid locked

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#3459191 5-Feb-2026 21:38

johno1234:

Surely where the bridge or tunnel goes is 100% determined by what it needs to hook into at each end?

yes its a major part of it. but there is other factors. see what the ground survey says. don't forget there is also storm water, sewage, power etc that needs to be navigated.

projects like this the cost/benefit is more like cost/outcome. the cost always outweighs the benefit. this is the problem north of auckland, very expensive to build so cost benefit ratio is always poor. hence much needed work never gets done. brynderwyn's is a good example. the amount of traffic over it is not all that high. but when its out of action the economic impact is very large.

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#3459192 5-Feb-2026 21:39

eracode:

SaltyNZ:

The overall project would be ridiculously expensive and cause more problems than it solves. The only one that really makes sense is another bridge parallel to the existing one, primarily for rail. The busway gets converted to rail and extends through Warkworth to eventually join up in Helensville or Wellsford.

And that too would be ridiculously expensive and IMO will never happen because NZ’s population and population density is too small. We will never be able to afford it and the cost-benefit economics (including our third-world civil engineering) would never be viable.

The volume of rail passenger traffic would be fairly small and freight would be unlikely to make it any better.

A lovely pipe-dream - and I would love it too if it was feasible.

Doesn't need to be heavy rail. The volume of bus traffic is already restricted by their ability to manoeuvre at the bus stations. Rail alleviates that. The Northern Busway is the pinnacle of 'if you build it, they will come.' Light rail can be quickly installed using prefabricated modules essentially just laid down on the existing road.

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#3459193 5-Feb-2026 21:43

SaltyNZ:

Light rail can be quickly installed using prefabricated modules essentially just laid down on the existing road.

Unless it's in Auckland, where it takes 6 years to lay no tracks.

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#3459195 5-Feb-2026 22:17

SaltyNZ:

Light rail can be quickly installed using prefabricated modules essentially just laid down on the existing road.

All the way to Warkworth and Wellsford as you said earlier?

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#3459197 5-Feb-2026 22:46

>Surely where the bridge or tunnel goes is 100% determined by what it needs to hook into at each end?

No no no... you must get with the programme.
The answer is rail - whatever the question is.

;-)

Somebody please give me better figures - but from what I can see:
(a) average usage of the network -
Aucklanders take 3 round-trips per year on the railway.
(b) cost to us, over and above the fares -
the average household kicks in 1,200 $ a year to support the rail service
(c) cost to expand it -
we've just spent 24,000 $ per household to add 3.4 km of track and a couple of stations

To give us a London or Singapore style of coverage, I recon we'll need 5 more lines:
(1) Flat Bush, E Tamaki, Botany & Howick, etc
(2) Airport, Mangere, Mt Roskill, Mt Albert & Pt Chev
(3) Hobsonville, Whenuapai, Massey, Te Atatu & Mt Albert
(4) Albany, Rosedale, Glenfield, Beach Haven, Birkenhead
(5) Orewa, Millwater, Silverdale, Red Beach, the Bays, Milford, Takapuna & Devonport

That's maybe 170 km of new lines & stations - which might cost us 1 M$ per household to build - with annual running costs of god knows what.
But it would likely cost much more - because we'd procrastinate the build over 60 years.

If you want to add in Kumeu, Warkworth, Whangaparaoa - you're looking at real money.

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#3459313 6-Feb-2026 11:45

Handle9:

eracode: including our third-world civil engineering

The ease with which New Zealand engineers are hired overseas shows the issue isn’t the engineering. It’s a small population in a big country so you get the best solutions you can afford.

Yes there’s nothing wrong with the quality of our civil engineers. It’s the conditions they work under that drives them away - regs, politics, small-minded thinking, cost restrictions, down-scaling of projects and so on.

I know a senior kiwi CE who worked in Dubai for years. Came home a few years ago to work on the Puhoi-Warkworth motorway extension north of Auckland. Just couldn’t stand it and left NZ again after a few months.

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#3459322 6-Feb-2026 12:02

eracode:

Yes there’s nothing wrong with the quality of our civil engineers. It’s the conditions they work under that drives them away - regs, small-minded thinking, cost restrictions, down-scaling of projects and so on.

I know a guy who worked in Dubai for years. Came home a few years ago to work on the Puhoi-Warkworth motorway extension north of Auckland. Just couldn’t stand it and left NZ again after a few months.

a mate is in the biz, works all around the world. no problem with nz construction, but certainly the admin and politics is a major issue. things like Johnson hill tunnels. anywhere else in the world they would have cut and bridged it instead of the expensive tunnels. but he regards nz tar sealing crews as 3rd world. badly trained, low quality work. and a system that has no accountability, so if crews stuff it up its often never repaired.

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#3459366 6-Feb-2026 16:29

We do have a weighty regulatory environment in NZ compared to our trading partners. The amount that gets spent here before the construction tender is ready to let is mind bending.

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#3459369 6-Feb-2026 16:51

johno1234:

We do have a weighty regulatory environment in NZ compared to our trading partners. The amount that gets spent here before the construction tender is ready to let is mind bending.

Thats not really true. Most developed democracies have similar regulatory regimes and relatively expensive construction costs. Something like HS2 is a great example.

The developing world or countries with different systems of government are able to build much faster and at lower costs than in the developed world. There’s a lot of reasons for that including regulatory regimes, labour costs and a lot of the development is greenfield vs brownfield.

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johno1234

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#3459383 6-Feb-2026 19:39

Handle9:

johno1234:

We do have a weighty regulatory environment in NZ compared to our trading partners. The amount that gets spent here before the construction tender is ready to let is mind bending.

Thats not really true. Most developed democracies have similar regulatory regimes and relatively expensive construction costs. Something like HS2 is a great example.

The developing world or countries with different systems of government are able to build much faster and at lower costs than in the developed world. There’s a lot of reasons for that including regulatory regimes, labour costs and a lot of the development is greenfield vs brownfield.

Specially not talking about construction costs. I’m talking about regulatory costs, permits, consents, consultation requirements, dealing with objections. We have a hostility to development. By comparison, state governments in Australia incentivise it.

Handle9

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#3459384 6-Feb-2026 19:57

johno1234:

Handle9:

Thats not really true. Most developed democracies have similar regulatory regimes and relatively expensive construction costs. Something like HS2 is a great example.

The developing world or countries with different systems of government are able to build much faster and at lower costs than in the developed world. There’s a lot of reasons for that including regulatory regimes, labour costs and a lot of the development is greenfield vs brownfield.

Specially not talking about construction costs. I’m talking about regulatory costs, permits, consents, consultation requirements, dealing with objections. We have a hostility to development. By comparison, state governments in Australia incentivise it.

Once again that’s not really true, certainly in the way you portray it. Major projects have fairly similar gestation periods. CRL and Metro West had roughly similar development cycles before construction began.

Australia generally has a more complex regulatory environment than New Zealand due to federal and state governments not always seeing eye to eye.

Certainly objections are still a thing there. A good friend of mine spends a significant amount of time in VCAT as an expert witness for acoustic issues. This type of work is a significant revenue stream for his consulting company.

What Australia does have is a bigger engineering base and a stronger funding base from a bigger economy. Some things are better, some are worse but it’s not orders of magnitude different.

SaltyNZ

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#3459412 7-Feb-2026 00:10

eracode:

SaltyNZ:

Light rail can be quickly installed using prefabricated modules essentially just laid down on the existing road.

All the way to Warkworth and Wellsford as you said earlier?

On the dedicated busway. Clearly the extension is, by definition, an extension.

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#3459415 7-Feb-2026 00:57

eracode:

pdh:

But I reckon the biggest problem is not the routing for the crossing - or the procurement of the property - but is figuring out why it costs us such insane amounts of money for our infrastructural projects.

Could not agree more. Civil engineering in NZ is like that of a third-world country. Not just the cost but equally the ridiculous length of time it takes to complete. And once complete, projects may not be fit for purpose.

And then they have to be remediated, causing major inconvenience, due to trying to save money by using a cheaper type of chip surface, which large parts are now being relaid. Eg Transmission Gully.

The new Te Ahu a Turanga Highway however seems to have been done well. Seems crazy that they still haven't replaced the old Rimutuka hill road, considering how dangerous it is, and the fact that in a big quake, people on it will likely die, so it is earthquake prone like many old buildings, and it will cut off a major transport link to Wellington. Yet they want to spend many times more on building a tunnel to saving a few minutes car travel time for politicians to get to the airport.

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