Comments on: Transmission Gully- $1bln white elephant

By: lprent

lprent — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:52:59 +0000

Whatever you say burt – but it does seem like it would raise the cost part of the equation.

Personally I think that the whole transmission gully road seems pretty bad. The only major ‘benefit’ would be to get politicians out of Wellington when the big one comes. But I thought that would be against your religions.

By: burt

burt — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:13:36 +0000

lprent

A tunnel seems like the most logical choice, perhaps the type of rock and the presence of fault lines etc buggers that option.

The perfect option would seem to be;

Rip the guts out of the top of the gully on a mega scale making the summit 100 meters lower than it is today. Stockpile the massive mounds of clean fill for when we need to build sea walls around the Kapiti coast. Replant ~~renewable resource credits~~ trees all over the remodeled landscape.

If you say my idea is silly I’ll call you a traitor.

By: lprent

lprent — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:52:54 +0000

I’ve never been there. Inclines are a bitch for trains, which is why there aren’t tracks over the harbor bridge.

However I was thinking more of a tunnel at transmission gully. There are probably those nice machines around that they used at Puhio.

By: burt

burt — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:22:55 +0000

lprent

I’ve taken my mountain bike up Transmission Gully a few times and I can assure you that getting a train up that gradient would be an interesting exercise. The “incline” grade sections of the old Rimutuka rail line are nowhere near as steep as Transmission Gully.

Sure it would be possible I guess…Perhaps the IPCC could model it for us and prove that gravity has different effects of trains when you use them to replace cars.

By: Macro

Macro — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:16:37 +0000

well it came up with ‘bus”

and this one is “beings”!!

Now that is spooky!

By: Macro

Macro — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:13:04 +0000

“Transmission Gully” is about access into and out of Wellington. Now if you can remove trucks and a large number of commuter traffic going to and from work from the existing motorway TG would be unnecessary! Sure you will need trucks in the city but the transportation of containers into and out of the city should be off the motorway.
Furthermore the Govt has said that it will cut Carbon emissions by 10 % or more. Just how is it going to achieve that if continues investing in concrete and more cars and trucks? The pitiful ETS is not going to achieve it.

By: lprent

lprent — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:10:51 +0000

Yes, it kept getting deferred for projects with better benefit / cost ratios – ie ones that returned more in benefits to the community than they cost.

By: Swampy

Swampy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:31:34 +0000

No it is because the roads north out of Wellington are inadequate for the traffic, they go through too many residential areas

By: Swampy

Swampy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:29:41 +0000

Labour supported TG in its previous term of office.

By: Swampy

Swampy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:27:35 +0000

You are much mistaken, the road has been campaigned for a decade or more, it was not suddenly dreamed up out of nowhere by the Minister.

By: Swampy

Swampy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:25:31 +0000

Because you still have to get the containers from the premises to the rail yards, and off at the other end. How do you do this except by road? And then it costs extra to transfer them from road to rail. We are talking here about relatively short journeys across town or whatever. And then the containers that have been loaded have to wait in the rail yard while the rest of them are loaded onto the train before it gets going, and then it takes time to unload them all at the other end.

Now a single truck may only be able to move one or perhaps two containers at a time but it can do so on demand and without these delays and extra handling. On a long distance trip it becomes less of an issue but on a short haul across a city it does not stack up so well.

By: Swampy

Swampy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:21:05 +0000

With the grades of the TG highway a rail line would be very expensive to operate. Still it has been talked about for decades, but this is the NIMT we are talking about and the most they have managed to justify in the heyday of railways was a couple of minor deviations (off the original route via Johnsonville).

By: Swampy

Swampy — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:17:43 +0000

Rise in the cost of oil will affect everything, not just road building, it will cause a massive economic slump, just as happened in the 70s with the oil price rises which caused recession in many countries. The truth is the oil economy is what our economic development relies on heavily. For this reason I dispute the wishful thinking that peak oil will lead to some new utopia where public transport will take over and everything continue as before.

By: Draco T Bastard

Draco T Bastard — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:10:13 +0000

It’s also interesting to note that the US that paragon of the free market still provides subsidises to the Oil and Coal industires.

The US loves free-markets – just so long as it’s not theirs. An actual free-market would destroy capitalism as there’s no profit in it (which is how the market should actually operate).

I agree re: population growth, but what do you propose to do about it? Coercive legislation?

I’d prefer education where everybody has a good idea as to what their life costs in regards to resources used.

By: felix

felix — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:13:57 +0000

Fair enough. I think I started replying to you while you were off on a tangent so I missed the context of what you were saying.