Nigel
Nigel is the founder, editor-in-chief, and lead writer at Pavlova Post, a New Zealand satire publication covering national news, local chaos, weather drama, politics, transport mishaps, and everyday Kiwi life – usually with a generous layer of exaggeration.
New Zealand’s latest round of Auckland harbour-crossing planning acquired another layer on Monday 17 August, when the government announced a new detailed business case for an additional Waitematā Harbour crossing. By Tuesday, 1News and RNZ reported that more than $106 million had already been spent on consultants and contractors working on the project.
The project has therefore reached a familiar New Zealand infrastructure milestone: enough work has been completed to justify doing more work.
The why is apparently sorted
Transport Minister Chris Bishop says earlier work has largely answered the question of why Auckland needs another harbour crossing. The next business case is intended to answer the considerably smaller remaining matters of what should actually be built, what it will cost, how it will be funded, how it will be delivered and how the thing will fit into Auckland’s wider transport network.
Those are admittedly quite substantial leftovers.
The government says NZTA completed an investment case in May and its board endorsed a tunnel as the preferred option. Cabinet has not endorsed that choice, however, and wants the new independently led detailed business case to examine funding, financing and delivery before ministers settle on a preferred crossing.
Auckland has therefore achieved the rare infrastructure condition in which there is a preferred option, but not yet the preferred option.
There have been bridge studies, tunnel studies, engineering work, network assessments, geotechnical investigations and now another business case intended to bring the answers together. A further study of a possible Meola Reef connection may also proceed if Auckland Council is interested.
At some stage, construction may make a guest appearance.
$106 million later, square one has paperwork
The reported $106 million-plus spent so far immediately attracted Winston Peters, who called the spending a gross waste of money and argued the project should go to tender so infrastructure companies could work from the information already collected and compete over possible solutions.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon responded by pointing out that the approach came from a cabinet decision and that three New Zealand First ministers were sitting in that cabinet when the decision was made.
New Zealand has therefore reached another advanced stage of megaproject development: publicly disagreeing with a government decision your own government made.
Bishop says ordering another business case does not mean the project has gone back to square one. His argument is that a multibillion-dollar project needs proper answers on cost, funding, timing and delivery before anybody starts pouring concrete beneath one of the country’s busiest pieces of water.
That is perfectly reasonable.
Square one, after all, did not have this many binders.
The difficulty is that Aucklanders have been hearing about another harbour crossing for rather a long time. 1News notes that proposals for another road connection across the harbour stretch back to the mid-1970s, giving the idea enough history to have experienced several generations of stationery technology.
The crossing has survived typewriters, fax machines, floppy disks, dial-up internet, cloud storage and whatever folder somebody is about to create for the next business case.
The bridge continues doing the actual crossing
There is no question the decision is enormous. The government says the existing Auckland Harbour Bridge carries about 170,000 vehicles a day, and ministers describe an additional crossing as potentially the largest and most expensive infrastructure project New Zealand has undertaken.
Nobody sensible wants several billion dollars committed on the basis of somebody saying, ‘Tunnel looks good,’ while reaching for a shovel.
Proper planning matters. Funding matters. Engineering matters. Getting a project of this size wrong would be considerably more expensive than getting another report right.
The comic problem is simply that the planning process has become substantial enough to resemble infrastructure of its own.
According to Bishop, the detailed business case should put cabinet in a position in 2027 to decide what should be built and how it should be paid for.
That timetable is worth reading carefully.
By 2027, the crossing is not expected to be open. It is not expected to be carrying traffic. Nobody is expected to emerge triumphantly from a tunnel on the North Shore wondering why their GPS still thinks they are underwater.
The government expects to be in a position to decide.
By then Auckland should possess engineering analysis, financing advice, governance arrangements, geotechnical information, bridge options, tunnel options, private-sector proposals and enough accumulated documentation to provide meaningful structural support if stacked correctly.
For now, the Auckland Harbour Bridge remains responsible for actually getting people across the harbour.
The paperwork is gaining on it.
Grown-Up Links
- New Zealand Government – Next steps on Waitematā Harbour crossing
- 1News/RNZ – Peters calls harbour crossing report a gross waste of money
This article was originally published by Pavlova Post.
