Brynderwyn Hills out of action again.

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#3263960 24-Jul-2024 13:44

Scott3: It also clouds our ability to evaluate the economics of the project as a whole.

Precisely. Do you want to be the politician who commits to, and has to defend, a $4 billion 10-year roading project for Northland? Which you pretty much know will be severely cut if not cancelled by the next government as a cost-cutting measure?

tweake

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#3263970 24-Jul-2024 14:11

Scott3:

Up until now, the roading projects between Auckland and Whangārei, have been peace meal, and have not considered the overall route. Generally have been upgrades / bypasses to chunks of the existing SH1 route. This constraint bounds the design compared to looking at the project in it's entirety (we can still build it in stages, but it would be optimized for the final configuration, not each succussive project). It also clouds our ability to evaluate the economics of the project as a whole.

Here is an example "The roughly 50-kilometre stretch, which includes the notoriously unstable Brynderwyn Hills, would only be scoped “at a later date”

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300939736/national-announces-four-lanes-to-whangrei-not-quite

Even the wording in yesterdays article spells out that the government is asking NZTA to plug a bunch of projects together to come up with a single expressway between the cities (as opposed to doing an evaluation of the route in it's entirety and selecting the optimal design.

"Brown said the Government has agreed “in principle” to an accelerated delivery strategy that will enable NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) to move at pace and deliver the Northland Roads of National Significance as a single expressway between Auckland and Whangārei"

that article is somewhat inaccurate, but it only covers what national proposed to do now, not what has already been in the works.

there is already plans for a Brynderwyn hills bypass as part of the marsden to tehana. however in that never planned to get to tehana. it stopped at kaiwaka. they never had anything for the link from kaiwaka to tehana. the Brynderwyn bypass can link up to tehana motorway easy enough. it looks like they allowed for that.

the warkworth bypass is done. the warkworth to tehana is still in planning (tho the land has been bought). unfortunately jacinda put the brakes on that, tho quietly revived it. auckland of course wants it badly.

it hasn't really been piece meal, they have done it as a single corridor for the warkworth bypass and on. previously, yes it was piece meal and full of politics. they kinda got forced to do the Owera to Puhoi part of the motorway because their resource consent was running out which meant they would have had to shut part of the northen motorway. however since then they have gotten better.

tweake

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#3263995 24-Jul-2024 14:42

i should add a bit of history for context.

back in the late 90's i think it was, there was a report on where the most dangerous black spots on nz roads where.

Auckland to Whangarei took 9 of the top 11 spots. (yes that does make it the single most dangerous drive in nz). the top spot was in the Waikato, which was fixed. i think the other was south island, also fixed. but 30 years later we still haven't completed Auckland to Whangarei.

tweake

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#3264016 24-Jul-2024 16:07

new-northland-expressway-plan-gets-thumbs-up-from-businesses

A Northland businessman says a decision to build a Northland expressway as one big public-private partnership has given him hope it will be completed during his lifetime.

i wish it was that simple. the dome will probably take 10 years. no word on of they will tunnel for part of that. the dome is fairly big project. a LOT of cut and fill.

but something needs to be done for the Brynderwyns well before that.

K8Toledo

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#3264375 25-Jul-2024 19:01

ezbee:

Suppose we will see if they will move 'fast' on fast tracking this.
Or use more scoping and cost benefit studies to delay for next Government?

Though the direction for some of these roads is to get them to pay by tolling?

How would Far North feel about that to get something finally done?

Speaking as Northlander, I would gladly pay it.

pdh

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#3265658 29-Jul-2024 01:06

I've just been re-saddened at our ineptitude at road infrastructure.

Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of driving the new road from Sharjah to Khor Fakkan in the UAE.
Sharjah is on the outskirts of Dubai, KF is on the opposite coast - so the road goes up & over the spine.

It's a beautifully graded and paved 4-lane motorway (with huge shoulders).
It's 90 km long and takes 45 minutes to drive.
For comparison, it's about that distance from Silverdale to Marsden Pt.

Part of it runs through 40 Km of rugged 800m hills - so it has 5 tunnels (longest 2.7 km) which total 6.4 km.
For comparison, the Puhoi is 0.35, Terrace is 0.44, Homer is 1.2, and Waterview is 2.4 (ie: a total of 4.4 km).

The rock cuts & terracing are enormous - 20+ ridges with some of the tallest & biggest cuts I've seen anywhere.
Engineered to cater for drifting sands, stray camels, flash flooding - and beautifully lit, the entire length.
Cloverleafs, underpasses, masses of rock-work and did I mention the tunnels ?

It cost them 3 B$NZ and took 5 years (2018-2023).

For comparison, Waterview cost the same, took 7 years - but was a mere 5 km long.
You do the math...
Note also that we'd been planning Waterview for 40 years.

Puhoi-Warkworth cost 1 B$NZ, took 7 years and is 19 km long - but with zero tunnels.

Penlink is now only 2-lane, will cost 1 B$NZ, take 5 years, is 7 km long - and has one bridge.

Our big kiwi engineering partnerships have been successfully working around the world - for many decades...
so why can't we do this stuff at home in NZ ?
Is it just our political setup, or something in the air ?

Here are a few snaps my wife took of UAE highway S142.

mudguard

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#3265667 29-Jul-2024 06:57

pdh:
Is it just our political setup, or something in the air?

Money. GDP very different between those two countries.

The other thing with Penlink is even if the Coast was fully developed there isn't the traffic movement to justify more lanes.

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#3265681 29-Jul-2024 08:13

UAE construction foreign labour that does the grunt work is low paid. Has to be a factor.

nzkc

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#3265683 29-Jul-2024 08:20

mudguard:

The other thing with Penlink is even if the Coast was fully developed there isn't the traffic movement to justify more lanes.

Since Millwater, Milldale and now with Pacific Heights developments there really is reason to have multiple lanes on Penlink. The traffic through Silverdale is abysmal. Almost any time of the day and any day too.

GV27

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#3265684 29-Jul-2024 08:23

mudguard:

The other thing with Penlink is even if the Coast was fully developed there isn't the traffic movement to justify more lanes.

The commuting traffic being as bad as it is now makes living on the Coast a hard sell for moving there. So I'd really struggle to understand how 'fully developed' there wouldn't be enough vehicle movements to justify a direct connection (that also takes pressure off the Silverdale/Orewa area, which is also rapidly developing) if you added even more people.

I mean for comparasion's sake, we're talking a population similar to Napier already.

mudguard

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#3265687 29-Jul-2024 08:34

GV27:

mudguard:

The other thing with Penlink is even if the Coast was fully developed there isn't the traffic movement to justify more lanes.

The commuting traffic being as bad as it is now makes living on the Coast a hard sell for moving there. So I'd really struggle to understand how 'fully developed' there wouldn't be enough vehicle movements to justify a direct connection (that also takes pressure off the Silverdale/Orewa area, which is also rapidly developing) if you added even more people.

I mean for comparasion's sake, we're talking a population similar to Napier already.

That's kind of the point. The commute has always been bad, and I've been up there twenty years. Penlink won't make that much better even with multiple lanes. The point is you shouldn't move there if you have any kind of commute or if you do, that's what you're going to get. It's like a comment about the Brynderwyns and more people commuting to Auckland, I mean that's a terrible justification for improving it. That's not a commute, that's another job.

Gurezaemon

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#3265695 29-Jul-2024 08:47

I asked a geotech friend here in Northland explained why our roads are so .... special. Her answer.

"People look at a long, flat stretch of countryside with a straight road going through it and think it should be easy to make a nice, flat, durable road. However in Northland, the ground underneath is all over the place. You'll have a couple of hundred meters of clay, then a stretch of bog, a stretch of solid rock, and then maybe some sand. Maybe with a small underground creek going through it. Most of this is not visible from above unless you really know what you're looking for. Given the ground underneath, frankly it's amazing that the roads are as good as they are. Extra storms because of climate change don't help either."

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itxtme

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#3265751 29-Jul-2024 09:04

pdh:

I've just been re-saddened at our ineptitude at road infrastructure.

It cost them 3 B$NZ and took 5 years (2018-2023).

For comparison, Waterview cost the same, took 7 years - but was a mere 5 km long.
You do the math...
Note also that we'd been planning Waterview for 40 years.

Puhoi-Warkworth cost 1 B$NZ, took 7 years and is 19 km long - but with zero tunnels.

Penlink is now only 2-lane, will cost 1 B$NZ, take 5 years, is 7 km long - and has one bridge.

If you think you can politically get an unskilled labour wage passed in NZ of 8.7k NZD per year than you too can build infrastructure at their price.

tweake

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#3265767 29-Jul-2024 09:49

Gurezaemon:

I asked a geotech friend here in Northland explained why our roads are so .... special. Her answer.

"People look at a long, flat stretch of countryside with a straight road going through it and think it should be easy to make a nice, flat, durable road. However in Northland, the ground underneath is all over the place. You'll have a couple of hundred meters of clay, then a stretch of bog, a stretch of solid rock, and then maybe some sand. Maybe with a small underground creek going through it. Most of this is not visible from above unless you really know what you're looking for. Given the ground underneath, frankly it's amazing that the roads are as good as they are. Extra storms because of climate change don't help either."

thats exactly right.

thats why northland is 3 times the cost of most other places (tho not all). rock and sand like UAE is so much simpler.

but also nz has politics and tends to do things for other reasons. northen motorway tunnel is ridiculous. any other country that would have been a cut. i suspect it was actually a test run for the tunneling system before it got used in auckland on bigger projects.

nz construction is not bad at all. except the tarseal guys who are worse than 3rd world.

mudguard

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#3265783 29-Jul-2024 10:35

nzkc:
mudguard:

The other thing with Penlink is even if the Coast was fully developed there isn't the traffic movement to justify more lanes.

Since Millwater, Milldale and now with Pacific Heights developments there really is reason to have multiple lanes on Penlink. The traffic through Silverdale is abysmal. Almost any time of the day and any day too.

I mean that's a bit over blown. I just drove from Army Bay to Wairau in 37 minutes. At 10am.

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