Light rail scrapped in a Nation incapable of building infrastructure
Government pulls the pin on multi-billion dollar Auckland light rail project
Auckland’s light rail has officially been tossed on the scrap heap by the National-led coalition government.
Transport minister Simeon Brown put the final nail in the coffin of the multi-billion dollar project on Sunday after a stop work notice was issued to the project last year after the government came to power.
“Scrapping the expensive project is part of the coalition agreements and we have taken swift action,” Brown said.
The project, which was expected to take up to 14,500 vehicles off the road, was intended to link a light rail system between the city centre and Māngere and Auckland Airport.
It was first floated nearly a decade ago by Auckland Council and it was initially believed work could start by 2016.
The latest plan to get more Aucklanders out of their cars and onto public transport has been killed off by the new hard right Government as we once again a Nation incapable of building infrastructure.
Once again fucking Wellington screws over Auckland.
There is a glorious pocket of time in Auckland City when I love it here.
After Christmas and until February, Auckland City empties and you got to wander through the lonely streets Quiet Earth styles like Bruno Lawrence.
This glorious pocket of solitude makes living in Auckland reasonable and fun and interesting over Summer.
For a moment each year we see what a City not groaning at the seams of over population and under investment in infrastructure feels like living in.
And then comes March Madness and a broken public transport system left begging people not to travel as a solution…
…don’t travel, that’s their solution?
Wow.
Just wow.
I want to punch the next commentator in the face who comes forward and glibly claims, ‘We can’t afford light rail down Dominion Rd’!
We are so underinvested for the vast growth generated by the mass immigration policies of Labour and National with no clear plan who is going to fund the infrastructure all that immigration requires.
We need underground and overground light rail all the way down Dominion Rd, all the way down Mt Eden Rd, all the way to South Auckland, all the way to West Auckland and all the way to the North Shore!
We need a new motorway connecting to Wellsford now plus passenger rail!
We need a vast upgrade of all Northland Roads, Coromonadal, the East Coast, the South Island!
We need a new Harbour Tunnel and we need a tunnel beneath the North and South Island!
We need our own pharmuctical industry.
We need a vast upgrade of our Military!
We not only need new drs, nurses and teachers, but we need new hospitals and schools.
We need solar panels on every roof.
We need Marae, Schools, Libraries, RSA, Churches and Community Halls to be directly resourced and built as resilience points inside a community.
We need state subsidised emergency survival kits to every community.
We need a new plan for food security.
We need degrowth sponge cities that pay the Artist wage.
We need 4 days working weeks, 11 weeks holidays and accomodation for Nurses, Drs, Teachers, Army and Police.
We need free public transport.
Free dental.
We need new regulation around Forestry, Telecommunications, Trucking industry and drainage industry.
We need a Ministry of Green Works and we need to pay for all this increased State capacity by taxing the rich more!
Sugar Tax
Financial Transaction Tax
Capital Gains Tax
Inheritance Tax
Land Tax
New top tax rate over $300 000
Wealth Tax on those over $30m
We have the tools to fund an increased State WHILE borrowing more at the same time.
This could be a chance to reset a broken Capitalism by removing the yoke of taxation from workers and putting it squarely on the speculators, the wealthy and the polluters.
Make the rich pay for hungry children to be fed.
The anger at the never ending cycle of climate carnage coming our way coupled with geopolitical shocks will force our hand if we continue to be in denial for the urgency of radical adaptation.
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Let’s see if bullshit Bishop can deliver our 700 million Riverlink he promised in the Hutt Valley now he has to walk his talk.
So because a date was given and it didn’t happen for whatever reason we scrap it. What a lot of empty headed buffoons we have in government with absolutely no thought for the future. Do they seriously think that roads don’t take money and planning before they are built . There is something wrong with a government who prioritizes cars over public transport, first the ferries now light rail the ev subsidies gone. The large donors are extracting their pound of flesh and our democracy is at risk and with all these vital infrastructure plans being stopped there is no one in the media who is asking why from this coalition of clowns
Yep the roading transport donors what their pound of flesh.
It’s not just infrastructure they can’t build, but a nation. They are wreckers, pure and simple, and the day corrupt politicians like them face prosecution and asset stripping cannot come soon enough. Korean used to be riddled with corruption, but prosecution and asset stripping have made public officials much less enthusiastic about it.
Putting my professional engineer’s hat on here:
There’s no way a tunnelling project for light rail would ever be viable. When Labour first promoted this pipe dream in the run up to the 2016 election, we rolled around the office floor laughing at the idea. Underground being vastly too expensive and a surface rail along Dominion Road not constructable due to the massive ensuing disruption. There was one technically feasible option but that would fall foul of our absurd RMA regulations and that would be to build something along the lines of the Chicago ‘L’. An elevated railway. This could be constructed piecemeal quite easily without massive congestion: Cast the bases progressively during the day then drop the portal frames in on a nightshift. Ah, but that would affect multiple Karen’s views of Mount Eden so it’s out.
These massive urban infrastructure projects need close examination from an economic and environmental standpoint. In essence we’re pouring billions into projects that encourage people to commute when the *correct* solution from an economic and environmental perspective is for them to work near where they live. So rather than moving thousands of people from Manukau to Queen Street every morning, we should rezone the suburbs so some of those jobs move out of the centre.
This whole ‘commuting to the office’ thing smells very 20th century to me. So many of my friends now work ether partly or entirely from home and most of those that don’t must use a vehicle due to the nature of their business. Along those lines, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years, we find the CRL turns out to be a white elephant too. We’ll see.
London, Paris, Sydney New York and virtually every European and US capital city were lucky not to have your type around when they built their urban transport systems.
Nimbies are everywhere. They think money just falls out of thin air.
Have you noted the population of those places you mentioned
It would cost as much to build a tunnel in Auckland as anywhere else but there would be a thousand per cent more passengers to travel on the train.Better buses, roads and working from home should be the way to go
They built them on the basis of massive populations where intensive labour was required to load & unload ships and an equal number of clerks were required to document it all.
That era is long gone. There aren’t thousands of wharfies working at the docks today and the only major employers downtown are a couple of insurance companies, lawyers offices and of course the Council itself.
And Andrew. When was the last time you built something. It’s like you’re stuck on a 1950’s tax bracket.
I don’t build things. I design things and manage people who build things. Well, I did. Now I just waste my time on the internet like you. LOL
I knew you would be a STEM bro.
I,I,I,I. clearly you aren’t in for anyone else.
Clearly everyone stuck on the Auckland motorway would think you a loser.
Yep, there is a lot of white collar work that can be done in the comfort of ones home. The company I work for does call center stuff for a number of clients around the country and 95% of us work from homw (myself included). And no, we are not all champange and pate quaffing ‘elites’ who look down on the hoi polloi. A lot of my colleagues are average working class types and are heavily Maori and Pasifika. But chances are, if you have an issue and you need to talk to a bank, insurance company, or power supply, you will get one of us.
The National Party have a very long history of sabotaging construction of essential transport infrastructure. In Auckland this decades ago resulted in an inadequate “compromise’ in the design and scope of the harbour bridge and the dismantling of rail networks.
They are incapable of exercising foresight, always passing predictable problems and remedial costs on to future generations. To be expected since they are in the pockets of vested interests.
This Auckland-based document needs to elevate its gaze to other parts of the country, even, dare I say, the southern south. The suburban service Dunedin-Mosgiel would cost a tiny fraction of the multi-billions the Auckland light rail project was projected to cost. In fact, the $228 mill already spent of consultants to ponder over the Auckland plan (but not 1 meter of rail, as many have pointed out) could have paid for the Mosgiel service reinstatement 4 or 5 times over.
100% We need public transport in the reigons as much as in Auckland.
Wellington screws Auckland? The Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport are both from Auckland. So is the Minister for economic development who might have some say in it. So looks like you’ve screwed yourselves doesn’t it.
The problem with light rail is that for some reason, it was changed to underground, and it made the project more complex than it needed to be. “They” should have just start building a section of the route (maybe airport to Mangere?) first and then complete it that way. Or even just built a dedicated bus route first.
It’s generally Auckland that subsidises the rest of New Zealand. The larger and more direct subsidies, when it comes to infrastructure, is urban vs suburban. As someone who’ve crunched the numbers it’s south Auckland that subsidises the infrastructure of wealthier suburbs. The primary driver of this is the density of urban areas, and lack of density in car-centric development. The more spread-out a development is, the more expensive it tends to be per capita to provide roads/pipes/wires/services.
Anyone can scrap a plan to save money this week, but to do so without an alternative is stupid. National canned Robbie’s Rapid Rail and see where that has got us. I agree with Andrew that the only way to achieve mass transport in a ‘functioning’ city is above ground.
Airport link should be heavy rail via Puhinui through to Onehunga for passenger and freight services.
Light system to Onehunga via Mt Roskill.
I’m pretty sure that was the original plan, before it got subverted by what I can only imagine, by Elon Musk simps.
For tax we could bring back old fashioned Stamp Duty. It has been replaced by those in power feeling they have a need to stamp on workers as a duty. Said it in one!
The population of Auckland will get to 2.5 million in the early 2030s. The number going to Mangere to work, get a plane, farewell or welcome someone will be up by hundreds of thousands a day. “Should’ve put rapid rail in back in the early 2020s” they’ll be saying,
Yep and that will be top of the list along with Nationals hundreds of other infrastructure failures, alongside all other policy failures.
Up the Library, found this book, Comrade, Bill Anderson!s, biography, brought back memories of serious struggle. Years it had been in this library, four take outs. Amazing how comrade, its word freaks out these new home, renters exploited, not to dare be seen ,take out a book with that word.
I am beginning to think is that the reason we don’t build any decent infrastructure is that we are not used to it, we don’t have the expertise to do it because no one in their right mind would come to NZ as a planner because they would be in and out of work every 3 years. This NZ first lot has stated that light rail has gone forever !!!
All our big decisions take years with political ideology at play. Its about time that this ideology took a back seat and a lasting consensus is reached between all parties that is non negotiable so that we get can actually get things done.
Good points NMG. Bring back the MoW where local knowledge can be accumulated.
Until the major parties are made by law to be in coalition we will have minor parties and their wealthy backers calling the shots. Making the major polling parties work together would mean decisions for the good of the country as a whole, not just fringe factions, would have to be made and this endless on/off chaos to oblivion would stop.
Bullshitter Bishop and his government are already backtracking on our 700 MILLION Hutt Valley Riverlink, yet he said on the campaign trail he (Bishop) gets things done for the Hutt Valley. Let’s make a note of all Nationals promises and see how many they actually deliver.
A relevant postscript on the topic from the Manhattan Institute:
“New York does face real fiscal woes. The city’s office-building tax base is falling in value, as work-at-home-for-half-the-week becomes a permanent feature of office life.”
So, for whom are we building the CRL?