Auckland light rail goes for tunnel option with harbour crossing
Auckland’s light rail line will be largely underground, and could be built in conjunction with a new bridge or tunnel across the Waitematā Harbour, the government has decided.
The government has widened its ambition to creating a new rapid transit network, which could advance by a decade the harbour crossing, and plug it into the line to Mt Roskill and Māngere.
The $14.6 billion Tunnelled Light Rail option was recommended by an establishment unit which weighed up options such as a street-level system, and was confirmed in a Friday announcement.
“We are future-proofing for the growth that we know is coming, and we are looking ahead 50 years plus,” Michael Wood, the transport minister, told Stuff.
By jove I think he’s got it!
After the disastrous abortion that was that cursed bike bridge. the Little General Michael Woods has finally done what people elected Labour to do in 2017, fix problems with genuine vision.
The bike bridge was an embarrassing knee jerk caused by David Slack’s middle class Devonport cycling militia and fermented by humorless feminist bloggers who see the bike as a means to undermine the patriarchy.
At $750million it would have been the most expensive political art installation in the Southern Hemisphere.
The fact that no one inside Labour considered how a bike bridge taking years to build right next to increasingly congested Harbour traffic would go down with those stuck in that traffic speaks volumes of the very little time was put into this idea.
Those mistakes seem to have finally been cast out with a proposal that will see light rail put underground alongside a second Harbour crossing!
This is big vision stuff finally being done properly!
Michael Wood just saved his reputation and saved Labour’s.
Now build the bloody thing!
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By joves, I think he might have too.
When they get down to the minutia, I hope they consider things like gauge (among other things), so that it allows the potential for other bits and pieces – like tram trains able to operate on both heavy rail, and light rail routes). We’ll have to wait of course to be told why things CAN’t happen, but we’ll hopefully wake up before the planet burns
Don’t be mean though @Martyn. David Slack and the lycra brigade have valuable contributions to make. I’m hanging out to hear what the Burma Road Corduroy Boy has to say about it all in some considered opinion piece in Granny Herald or RNZ’s The Panel so I can be in with the in crowd.
Could be worth the gummint actually buying one of those tunnelling machines too. There’s stuff to be done right around the motu it could be put to work on ( in various spaces, going forward )
By joves, I think he might have too.
When they get down to the minutia, I hope they consider things like gauge (among other things), so that it allows the potential for other bits and pieces – like tram trains able to operate on both heavy rail, and light rail routes). We’ll have to wait of course to be told why things CAN’t happen, but we’ll hopefully wake up before the planet burns
Don’t be mean though @Martyn. David Slack and the lycra brigade have valuable contributions to make. I’m hanging out to hear what the Burma Road Corduroy Boy has to say about it all in some considered opinion piece in Granny Herald or RNZ’s The Panel so I can be in with the in crowd.
Could be worth the gummint actually buying one of those tunnelling machines too. There’s stuff to be done right around the motu it could be put to work on ( in various spaces, going forward )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDSPwexlyTo
AND under the helm of a Fair Lady by joves! Who’d have bloody thought. Could this be the year of delivery?
hahaha that would be a “no”
He hasn’t saved a thing.
Labour have talked a big game, delivered swet FA. Announcement after announcement after announcement.
On public transport it was light rail to Mt Roskill 2021, light rail to Huapai by 2027 and a walking bridge over the harbour, then a 3/4 billion dollar bike bridge. All. Failed. And let’s not talk about housing!
These announcements remind me of a gambling addict who just needs one more hand cos his losing streak can’t go on. Oh yes it can!
Jacinda and Labour have been too busy managing the Covid, they haven’t had the time or resources to concentrate on other issues like transport, housing or infrastructure.
Underground is inhuman.
The perfect epitaph for the blundering Labour/Green legacy.
If we are going to replace ICE transport with survivable public transport it needs to be street level, not dungeon level drowned by rising seas and disturbing the underworld of lava flows.
The old trolley buses easily handled Auckland hills and valleys; modern streetcars could fill the spaces vacated by fewer cars.
They would be a visible incentive to get out of cars and jump onto trams.
If anyone has ridden the old trams in Vienna and thrilled at the g forces as they turned corners knows that a livable city has to be physically exciting.
All of this tunnel vision is due to trying to link the CBD with the Airport.
Who knows how much air travel will be tolerated in the future or when one can rent an uber e-drone from home?
Its the old problem. NZ’s property owning democracy born of land theft means the that street/farm level property has priced linking heavy rail from Puhinui to the airport. It seems.
But that opens the prospect of nationalising land for accessing the airport for public health and safety purposes as a Treaty right.
Until NZ settles accounts with colonisation Aotearoa is hung up on NZ crony capitalism that can still make a Trillion out of the pandemic.
Evil Roy Slade learning basic math.
Roy, you have 5 apples. Your neighbour comes and steals 3 of your apples. How many apples do you have now Roy?
His answer. 5 apples and a dead neighbour.
The oldies used to sing this often – favourite. If we can’t build reasonable housing in reasonable numbers, and control our borders for reasonable immigration we might be singing this too in future. Be reasonable –
Auckland is a city with lots of volcanoes, Rangitoto sits out in the harbour. And we are boring under the sea with big berthas at a time when we expect vehicle use to decline? Passenger trains will be able to have priority also buses. Istanbul has a giant bridge and China has long bridges. What can we do on those lines?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7HoMWuXCY4
Underneath the Arches
Bud Flanagan, Chesney Allen
Underneath the arches
We dream our dreams away
Underneath the arches
On cobblestones we lay
Every night you’ll find us
Tired out and worn
Happy when the daylight comes creeping
Heralding the dawn
Sleeping when it’s raining
And sleeping when it’s fine
Trains rattling by above
Pavement is a pillow
No matter where we stray
Underneath the arches
We dream our dreams away
When the Canterbury regional council (ECan) asked the government for $41 million to help fund a Rolleston-Christchurch (via Templeton & Hornby) commuter rail service using ex-Auckland diesel multiple units, the government rejected it because they needed the money for the almost billion dollar Auckland bike bridge.
Spending $15 billion in Auckland on public transport is obviously going to mean no improvements to public transport in Christchurch then?
Conservative estimates in a report by the local councils on the future population increase in the greater Christchurch area put the population in 2050 to 700,000. Others forecasted much higher population of roughly a million people.
So there is a good potential that Christchurch might extend all the way from Amberley to Ashburton, yet the government is not planning for either the conservative or ooptimistic outlooks. But it is willing to cash out $15 billion dollars for a metro system for Auckland?
That is so so poor.
The ex Auckland diesel fleet had been rotting away in Taumaranui for the past 6 years and it had literally decades of life left in it.
And Christchurch has the rail line network more than Auckland to connect multiple suburbs and outlying townships so the funding was surely justified as part of their so called Climate change work, if they cared, which clearly they don’t
Where are the useless “Green” politicians on this?
Where is Poto? (Just gags, she goes to work this eat her lunch)
Labour just constantly demonstrate they have no idea.
Buses here on the North Shore are largely empty but round and round go. I guess they are like petri dishes for infection.
If Martyn is right about pandemics being the new norm. Im guessing public transport is a sunset industry. Except for the poor folks.
Cheer up Hetzer – read a book and don’t think about the news for a week. Something might change in that time. If not read another book. Don’t watch television, do something yourself. If nothing changes look for a group doing positive non destructive things like growing vegetables, otherwise you might become a human one. Too much depression is bad for people.
maybe you should get out of bed earlier, when i was working on a building on Fanshaw St, every bus, and large proportion of them were double decker buses, were standing room only from 6.30 till 8am. Thats a lot of people being transported across the harbour.
Honestly, this is comedy, right?
Because when you look at at face value, its also an announcement announcing an upcoming announcement in 2023 to see if a second Harbour crossing will be announced.
It’s like a MASH script lampooning bungling Army bureaucracy.
Are announcements the best Labour can do? I say yes because that all we’ve got so far!
No, there is no more money left for our terrible pandemic, no money for our indigenous, no more for education and housing, and certainly no more for a light rail vanity project pushed out in reaction to a bad poll (although if we enclose Auckland in a border then those within this border can pay for it themselves, maybe sell your overpriced houses from the housing bubble contagion you unleashed on the rest of us).
For the last twenty years i have often thought “I really need to unleash a housing bubble contagion on the rest of the country…”
Damn, you say the stupidest things.
Absolutely Mike, Heather 2 plus 3 Allen has already confirmed it will be more than the cost stated and years stated. The right wing cronie, MickeyBoyle has entered the eco chamber with the same. So nothing new here.
\Such a shame they don’t remember Wellingtons Transmission Gulley…
“On 15 December 2009 Minister of Transport Steven Joyce announced the Government’s commitment to the project as one of seven Roads of National Significance, with a predicted project cost of NZ$1.025 billion.[11]”
In February 2020 it was announced that the expected cost of $850m had been increased by another $191m.[25] In March 2021 the road was reported to cost a projected $1.25 billion by its then-expected opening date in September 2021, and will not include a planned extra merge lane at the Linden interchange to relieve congestion.[26]
Thank you National.
Jacinda couldn’t build a fart.
This is how bored they are eagerly ringing there hands in hope that everything is falls over so they can lose there is way into government.
And the alternative?
All based on the outmoded thinking that everyone works in an office on Queens Street.
What we *actually* need is a new second road bridge to replace the existing old one.
Ahh more roads! More congestion.
All opinions aside on whether this is a good or bad idea, personally to service Aucklands older suburbs, above ground to me would have been just fine but consistent with the government’s delivery failures the following questions have not been answered;
Who is designing this?
Who in this country has the connections or skills to build such a diverse complex system, especially since its navigating its way between volcanoes as that presents some definite challenges in drilling through underground lava formations. I am aware the Newmarket Viaduct struck complications exactly for that very reason. And that was just a replacement.
How can that be accurately costed?
Wood is going to wave his wand with his – back of a beer coaster plan – and some bureaucrats in Wellington are suddenly going to put the million pieces of this jigsaw together? Honestly I don’t think so!
Without a knowledgeable minister and parliamentary team who can drive this, of which on the basis of the past 4 years they have none, I promise, this will be another Ardern government pipe dream. And with it yet another failure example to beat them with.
Think again Minister Wood with such exuberant promises. They’ll bite you in the arse.
tunnel shmunnel
who are the tards in charge of this?
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