transport

Categories under transport

Does NZ have $400 million+ to burn?

Written By: - Date published: 11:51 am, May 7th, 2012 - 36 comments

The Environmental Protection Agency, bastard child of Nick Smith chaired by National crony Kerry Prendergast, has given draft approval to Transmission Gully. This billion dollar project returns 60 cents of benefits for every dollar spent. Worse than a night on the pokies. And that’s NZTA’s estimate assuming traffic growth that isn’t happening, and not accounting for $5 a litre petrol.

$5 a litre petrol, here we come

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 3rd, 2012 - 94 comments

Last week, the IMF warned that oil prices will double over and above inflation in the next decade. The Greens crunched the numbers and say that means we’ll be paying $5 a litre for petrol in 2022. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now. A handful of white elephant highways is a poor use of $14 billion, especially when petrol is only getting more expensive.

Holiday highway even less affordable

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, April 30th, 2012 - 14 comments

The case for the Puhoi to Wellsford Holiday Highway just got even worse. Before, officials reckoned it would return net benefits worth ten cents for every dollar spent. Now, the cost will equal the benefits – if traffic volumes double in 15 years. Problem is, traffic volumes in Northland are flat or falling in the Peak Oil Age.

Veolia Transport: where were the backup plans?

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 pm, April 26th, 2012 - 73 comments

I have and still do deal with quite a lot with systems in my day-job. But this…. I’m aghast at the self-evident stupidity. A power outage has shut down almost all train services across the Auckland region. The fault at KiwiRail’s National Train Control in Wellington, which controls Auckland signals and radio control, occurred about […]

The Gisborne rail line

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, April 25th, 2012 - 42 comments

Zetetic’s recent post on the Gisborne rail line generated a lot of comment.  A week later a final comment was added – it deserves a wider audience…

Save the Gisborne rail line

Written By: - Date published: 9:53 am, April 16th, 2012 - 122 comments

Looks like the Nats are going to use the bridge washout on the Gisborne-Napier rail line as an excuse to close it. Despite wagon volumes growing 12-fold this year. A massive piece of capital, mothballed for want of $4.3m. More has been spent so far clearing a slip from the nearby Waioeka Gorge road, no questions asked. The Nats’ anti-rail agenda = more trucks tearing up our roads and more oil imports.

Nats need better excuses on billion dollar tax cut borrowing

Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, April 11th, 2012 - 12 comments

As the Nats try to spin us into accepting another zero budget, focus is turning to 2 big holes that their policy decisions have created. First, the $1b+ a year spend on the low to negative value Roads of National (Party) Significance. Second, the $1b+ annual cost of the 2010 tax changes. That’s $2b+ that could be spent elsewhere, avoiding spending cuts without more borrowing.

Brownlee’s head in the sand, looking for cheap oil

Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, April 4th, 2012 - 64 comments

Rookie Green MP Julie Anne Genter, a transport planning expert before entering Parliament, gave Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee, whose qualification for the job is that he used to teach kids to make wooden toy cars, a sharp lesson in transport policy in the House yesterday. It’s rare for a newbie to show up an old tusker like that. With petrol prices at record levels, I hope someone in the government’s listening.

Cost of the Ports of Auckland fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, March 29th, 2012 - 9 comments

Apparently the Auckland Council doesn’t know how much the POAL fiasco is costing. Rough estimates suggest that the cost is at least $400,000 a day, probably significantly more.  No wonder the Council doesn’t want to know.

Workers’ victory over incompetent PoAL management

Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, March 28th, 2012 - 43 comments

Ports of Auckland must pay the permanent workers among the union members it had illegally locked out. It’s only a partial victory for workers who want to work and have long-term job security, not just get paid for two weeks. But it’s yet another costly defeat for management. How long will they keep burning ratepayers’ money like this before the council acts?

Give Way

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, March 25th, 2012 - 18 comments

As we all should know by now, the road rules for giving way have changed.

Farrar discovers peak oil, nearly

Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, March 20th, 2012 - 101 comments

Barack Obama will be breathing a sigh of relief after David Farrar endorsed his call to end oil subsidies. It seems the 3rd oil price spike in 5 years is getting the attention of even the Right. Something, they’ve got an inkling, is wrong and rising petrol prices are here to stay. Pity that, on the cusp of revelation, Farrar opts for the security blanket of neoclassical economics.

Meeting a need

Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, March 9th, 2012 - 25 comments

Can anyone tell me why the Nats are spending $300m to build and $36m pa to run a 960-bed PPP prison when there are 2000 spare beds in the system and prisoner numbers are projected to fall? Or why Joyce is cutting a dirty ‘convention centre for pokies’ deal when international convention numbers are falling? Or why they’re spending $1b a year on low BCR highways when vehicle numbers are falling?

Management incompetence costs POAL millions

Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, March 8th, 2012 - 28 comments

Ports of Auckland wants to increase profits by slashing pay-packets by 20% – $6m. So far, the process has cost them at least $28m. Add $9m for redundancies. Add the cost of continuing interruption as the contractors are established. Add the cost of blacklisting. Add the cost of customers that have shifted ports. Len Brown should sack the POAL management for incompetence.

National’s transport priorities revealed

Written By: - Date published: 7:50 am, March 2nd, 2012 - 19 comments

Louise Upston had a patsy for Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee about a bridge replacement in her electorate (the Nats have big achievements to crow about, eh?). Upston asked about the project’s benefits. Brownlee responded “First, I would expect re-election of the local member”. Now we know what National sees at those end of those highways to nowhere – swing votes.

Roads to nowhere

Written By: - Date published: 3:34 pm, March 1st, 2012 - 22 comments

There never was a good business case for holiday highways. Now it’s even worse.

Billions down the drain on roads to nowhere

Written By: - Date published: 12:13 pm, February 15th, 2012 - 42 comments

Gerry Brownlee has weakly attempted to fob off the decline in benefit:cost ratio of highway projects under National. ‘Sure’ he says ‘we’ve been funding projects that barely break even while high BCR spending like early childhood education gets cut, but things will turn around’. Um, no. Look at the projects National has on the horizon, […]

MoT reveals massive budget shortfall from peak oil

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, February 4th, 2012 - 36 comments

Almost missed among all the blacked out paragraphs of the Transport Briefing to the Incoming Minister are 2 interesting graphs. While not explicitly mentioning peak oil, the graph of the National Land Transport Fund shows a massive shortfall in revenue in a ‘high oil price, low growth’ scenario. The other shows how low-quality National’s highway spending is.

Adapting to peak oil

Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, January 20th, 2012 - 160 comments

As peak oil slowly grinds down our economy – meeting any hint of growth with sky-high petrol prices and making $2 a litre the ‘new normal’, we are actually, gradually,starting to react. Not at a governmental level, where action is most urgently needed, but in the decisions made by ordinary Kiwis every day.

Joyce knows best

Written By: - Date published: 7:09 am, December 6th, 2011 - 35 comments

Steven Joyce isn’t a big believer in democracy. He has overruled Treasury, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry for the Environment to make sure that the government keeps control of Auckland’s transport funds, and Auckland Transport is unaccountable to Aucklanders.

Nats’ ad claims credit for Lab’s infrastructure

Written By: - Date published: 9:43 am, November 1st, 2011 - 51 comments

Oh dear. This is not what National needed on the back of Goff besting Key in the first debate. National’s new TV ad is on the world-class infrastructure they claim to have built. But it was all planned, funded, and mostly built by Labour. Have National accidentally revealed their real achievement: taking credit for others work?

Labour overshadows Key with Auckland transport policy

Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, October 30th, 2011 - 130 comments

Labour has just over-shadowed Key’s big smile and wave show today – where he is expected to reannounce spending – with another big policy. Labour will cancel National’s Holiday Highway. With the money saved, they will make the existing road safe, and go 50-50 with the Auckland council to fund the CBD rail-loop and get Auckland moving sustainably.

Laissez-faire disaster management

Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, October 9th, 2011 - 60 comments

National’s handling of the Rena oil spill is fitting into the same depressing pattern as Pike River and Christchurch – hands off, leave it to the private sector, ministers trotting out excuses rather than leading. We’re even getting the mandatory Key photo-op today, doubtless accompanied by a hollow promise.

Government to overrule Auckland?

Written By: - Date published: 2:04 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 24 comments

Nick Smith is looking at issuing a “Government policy statement” to ensure that the Auckland Plan complies with their agenda. They may ban the urban limits that are proposed to keep green, productive land around Auckland and help ensure rates stay low and public transport works in a more liveable city.

Garner rips useless Nats

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 15th, 2011 - 76 comments

Joh Keys Party Central

Duncan Garner has demolished the government’s disgraceful excuse-making over its woeful lack of preparation  for the World Cup. “I was there. It was scary. It was a disgrace. There were few police. There were no barriers. It was NOT family friendly. It was a tragedy waiting to happen.And that’s just Party Central. That’s the bit the Government was responsible for. Don’t forget that.”

Incompetent and insulting

Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, September 15th, 2011 - 82 comments

The government’s handling of the RWC opening and the resulting chaos has been both incompetent and insulting to Auckland.  “Seizing control” is simply adding insult to injury.

McCully needs to front up

Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, September 11th, 2011 - 92 comments

McCully  is Minister for the RWC.  He claimed the government had done “their best” and assured Auckland that the transport systems were ready to go.  He was wrong in every respect. In the aftermath of the fiasco McCully now needs to front up and get three things right…

Auckland transport shambles

Written By: - Date published: 1:27 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 111 comments

The RWC public transport fiasco was not a good look for our biggest city, and not a great advertisement to the world.

Life imitates art…

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 pm, September 7th, 2011 - 50 comments

Sometimes the similarities between life and art are uncanny.

A reader sent us in a Steven Joyce lookalike pic (over the jump).

Wanna trade Solid Energy for the Kapiti Expressway?

Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, August 24th, 2011 - 41 comments

During his disastrous campaign trip to Kapiti yesterday, John Key said the Kapiti Expressway would be paid for by asset sales. Labour will do neither. National won’t release the Expressway’s benefit-cost ratio but it will cost $500m ($30K per metre). To get it, we would have to sell half of Solid Energy, which has paid us $310m of dividends in the past 5 years.

On a road to nowhere

Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, July 28th, 2011 - 16 comments

The government has put out a new policy statement on transport. Total funding is unchanged. But cost of the RoNS is rising before they’re even built. So, it’s more money into white elephant highways. Less money for road safety, local roads, road policing, and public transport. Stupid myopic policy.