Speaker 1: Kyoda. I'm Susie Nordquitzt and for Chelsea Danielson. This is
Speaker 1: the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New
Speaker 1: Zealand Herald. A replacement bridge or a new one? Or
Speaker 1: how about a tunnel instead? The ongoing debate about a
Speaker 1: new harbor crossing in Auckland has reignited, with Auckland's Mayor
Speaker 1: Wayne Brown laying up his vision for a second bridge
Speaker 1: instead of the tunnel proposed by Labor. The proposal has
Speaker 1: already proved controversial as it would require building through Meola
Speaker 1: Reef to Cody Point. So how does this plan stack
Speaker 1: up with other proposals and why is it taking so
Speaker 1: long to get this crossing off the ground. Today on
Speaker 1: the front page, New Zealand Herald, Senior writer Simon Wilson
Speaker 1: joins us to discuss our biggest city's biggest transport headache. Simon,
Speaker 1: can you take us through what Wayne Brown has proposed
Speaker 1: for a new White and Matar crossing.
Speaker 2: Wayne Brown has recognized that there is a need for
Speaker 2: greater resilience in the harbour crossing setup that we have.
Speaker 2: Now we're relying on just the aging Auckland Harbor Bridge
Speaker 2: and the upper Harbor Highway motorway as well, which is
Speaker 2: a security throuit for many people. And he has also
Speaker 2: recognized that tunnels cost a lot more than bridges, so
Speaker 2: he wants to build a bridge over what he sees
Speaker 2: is the short as distance between the shore and a
Speaker 2: southern part of the Smith's part of Auckland, which is
Speaker 2: at Mayola Reef, which is Westmere Points Chevalier on the
Speaker 2: south and crosses Dacari Point on the north.
Speaker 1: How viable is this as a transport route We've heard
Speaker 1: about all these different proposals over the years.
Speaker 2: Well, we're not really just talking about building a bridge,
Speaker 2: we're talking about connecting motorways. So on the south there
Speaker 2: is the Northwest Motorway which cuts through from Newton Gully,
Speaker 2: go out to Point Chevalier and then crosses the causeway
Speaker 2: and goes out to the west. Now that's pretty close
Speaker 2: to mail A Reef, and you could build a motorway
Speaker 2: extension from there just to the west of the Zoo
Speaker 2: along Motions Road. So a motorway would go between the
Speaker 2: Zoo and Western Springs Park on one side and Pasadena
Speaker 2: Intermediate and Western Springs College on the other side. Then
Speaker 2: would presumably fly over Seddin Field out to mail A
Speaker 2: Reef and then on to the north. That's a pretty
Speaker 2: big imposition on that area, but it wouldn't require much
Speaker 2: destruction of housing. And if you did it as a flyover,
Speaker 2: you would build it over Motions Road, so mainly you'd
Speaker 2: be building it over what's already a road. Ugly but
Speaker 2: not so disruptive. Perhaps on the northern side. However, it's
Speaker 2: very different to get to either of the motorways, the
Speaker 2: Upper Harbor Highway Motorway or the State Highway one. You've
Speaker 2: got to carve through large stands of reserve which include
Speaker 2: a lot of chari forest, and also got to cut
Speaker 2: through suburban areas, so Burke, places like Burke and Heap
Speaker 2: Glenfield would be significantly affected. It's an enormous disruption to
Speaker 2: the shore.
Speaker 3: One of my bajor things is to stop wasting money,
Speaker 3: and the government has said that we should stop wasting money,
Speaker 3: and so should they. And there's no way that the
Speaker 3: government can afford New Zealand can afford the tunnel solution
Speaker 3: is anywhere between thirty five and fifty five billion dollars,
Speaker 3: which eats up all of the road budget for ten
Speaker 3: years and now that's it untenable.
Speaker 1: Do you think it has any chance of going ahead
Speaker 1: given those environmental impacts you spoke about.
Speaker 2: I think those environmental impacts are only one of a
Speaker 2: number of things that will mean this has no chance
Speaker 2: at all. It's interesting to think about why Wayne Brown's
Speaker 2: raised this. It's not been proposed by any political party
Speaker 2: at the moment that we build a new habit it's
Speaker 2: not on the government's plans, labors out of power and
Speaker 2: doesn't have any forward thinking policies at the moment around transport.
Speaker 2: But he's raised this. There are other factors. That's the
Speaker 2: environmental factors. There are some cultural factors to do with
Speaker 2: the Mailer reef and its role in traditional Ewi culture.
Speaker 2: There is also an engineering issue. Mail A reef is
Speaker 2: lava rock, so it's hard, but it's pretty thin. Underneath
Speaker 2: it is this normal kind of muck sediment that sits
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the ocean, and actually that's very soft,
Speaker 2: So it's a significant environmental iman. You could build the bridge,
Speaker 2: but it would be a major engineering challenge to do that,
Speaker 2: so that's a really big issue as well. And then
Speaker 2: on top of that you've got to look at the.
Speaker 4: Cost the vision that we're setting out today includes separate
Speaker 4: road and rapid transit tunnels, reallocating lanes on the existing
Speaker 4: Auckland Harbor Bridge to walking and cycling, include having two
Speaker 4: rapid transit routes to the north shore. That's got the
Speaker 4: greatest benefits of all the options. That comes with a
Speaker 4: price tag of between thirty five and forty five billion dollars.
Speaker 4: That price tag, of course, would be paid for over
Speaker 4: many years, in the same way as as usual for
Speaker 4: significant roading projects.
Speaker 1: The last idea for a new crossing came from Labor,
Speaker 1: a tunnel that would cost tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: and take decades to build. That one's dead in the water, right.
Speaker 2: So to speak. When Labor proposed tunnels under the harbor,
Speaker 2: which would roughly be close to where the Harbor Bridge
Speaker 2: is now, Nationals seem to be sympathetic to that, and
Speaker 2: both the major parties have always fancied the idea of
Speaker 2: some kind of new crossing there, and they both appeared
Speaker 2: to favor tunnels. Tunnels will be extraordinarily expensive. Back a
Speaker 2: few years ago, the figure of fifteen billion dollars was suggested,
Speaker 2: but it's probably many times more than that now. Maybe
Speaker 2: over fifty billion, who knows. And perhaps more significantly, the
Speaker 2: last time a business case analysis was done for a
Speaker 2: tunnel system under the harbor, it came back suggesting it
Speaker 2: would return twenty cents on every dollar point two. Now
Speaker 2: that's appalling. That's not the recipe with which you want
Speaker 2: to build major infrastructure. That's what it was. Then. We
Speaker 2: don't know what it would be now because Labor didn't
Speaker 2: produce a new BCA for its new plans last year.
Speaker 2: But one clue is that National hasn't included a new
Speaker 2: work on a new harbour crossing in its new Land
Speaker 2: Transport program, which is a funding program. And my guess
Speaker 2: is the reason for that is they know perfectly well
Speaker 2: that it's very hard to make it stack up financially,
Speaker 2: so they're putting their money into other things. They're not
Speaker 2: looking at a harbor crossing. So I don't think you
Speaker 2: can see those tunnels really ever becoming a viable option.
Speaker 1: Again, there's the argument, though, something needs to be done.
Speaker 1: How do we raise the money right?
Speaker 2: So something needs to be done. There have been a
Speaker 2: number of proposals for bridges. There's a lot of kind
Speaker 2: of myth making around than what we actually need. One
Speaker 2: of the factors is that if you build more roads,
Speaker 2: you get more people driving. So the critical need for
Speaker 2: the Shore is to build up what's called rapid transit
Speaker 2: on the shore, and the North Shore is a really
Speaker 2: interesting poster example already for why rapid transit works. The
Speaker 2: Northern Busway was opened in two thousand and eight. Before
Speaker 2: it opened, everybody on the shore said, we don't catch buses.
Speaker 2: This is not going to work. This is a complete
Speaker 2: white elephant or a complete waste of money. In fact,
Speaker 2: now on the Harbor Bridge during the morning peak time,
Speaker 2: something over forty percent of all commuters are riding on
Speaker 2: a bus and it's an extraordinary success story, and it's
Speaker 2: one of the things that it should have been copied
Speaker 2: in Auckland by now to the west. It is being
Speaker 2: copied now to the east, but that's still some years
Speaker 2: off being finished. The city needs more of that Now
Speaker 2: that Northern Busway route is going to be full quite soon,
Speaker 2: so the North Shore is going to need extra capacity
Speaker 2: in rapid transit. So one of the needs for the
Speaker 2: Harbor crossing is to create more rapid transit at the
Speaker 2: same time. I mean, it's really interesting. During the period
Speaker 2: between two thousand and eight and now there'sh are populations
Speaker 2: grown by forty percent, but there are not significantly more
Speaker 2: cars on the bridge. It is because that growth has
Speaker 2: been catered for by public transport. Keep that principle going
Speaker 2: and you get then the key to what do we
Speaker 2: actually need for the crossing? So we need a public
Speaker 2: transport crossing. And in addition to that, there are an
Speaker 2: awful lot of people who want to walk over the
Speaker 2: bridge and cycle over the bridge and don't want to
Speaker 2: do that in tunnels, don't particularly want to do it
Speaker 2: on a ferry either. They actually want the pleasure, whether
Speaker 2: they're commuters or recreational users or tourists, to be able
Speaker 2: to get over there and enjoy the really really beautiful
Speaker 2: city from that pantage point.
Speaker 1: So more buses, more ferries, and a bike lane.
Speaker 2: More buses, or it could be light rail. See if
Speaker 2: it's not tunnels, you know tunnels just know everywhere, So
Speaker 2: it could be tunnels. It could be more buses and
Speaker 2: a bike lane, yes as well. And if we do
Speaker 2: that we will find that at the same time, if
Speaker 2: we increase our rail freight capacity to Northland, which will
Speaker 2: take freight trucks container trucks off the Harbor Bridge. If
Speaker 2: we do that, we may find that we don't need
Speaker 2: to build lots more roads.
Speaker 1: Simon. We've been talking about an additional harbor crossing for
Speaker 1: as long as I can remember. John Banks proposed a
Speaker 1: harbor tunnel between Mechanics Bay and Devonport and the early
Speaker 1: two thousands for one billion dollars. Why can't we just
Speaker 1: get on with it and get it done like other countries.
Speaker 2: One reason that we don't get on with and get
Speaker 2: it done is that every time people do try and
Speaker 2: work out the economic value of it, it comes up short.
Speaker 2: And I mentioned before twenty cents in the dollar last
Speaker 2: time it was tried. So there are a lot of
Speaker 2: people on the North Shore who feel we should have
Speaker 2: a new harbor crossing because they worry that the bridge
Speaker 2: might collapse, which it is not going to do. The bridge,
Speaker 2: with proper maintenance, we are told by the experts, will
Speaker 2: have a reasonably long life in front of it, provided
Speaker 2: it's managed. Provided it that doesn't continue having to take
Speaker 2: lots more heavy trucks and perhaps lots more buses as well.
Speaker 2: If it was if it was left to light traffic,
Speaker 2: it should be fine. But people think that we're going
Speaker 2: to need that extra crossing, so it's become as a
Speaker 2: political thing for politicians to promise to do it. But
Speaker 2: because it would be so expensive to do the tunnels,
Speaker 2: that's never really been pursued, and because there are other
Speaker 2: projects that always come up with a better cost value analysis,
Speaker 2: this one keeps being pushed down the track.
Speaker 1: Speaking of other countries, Sydney has recently opened the first
Speaker 1: stage of its new rapid train line.
Speaker 4: It's Australia's biggest public transport project, and today the crucial
Speaker 4: city line of the Sydney Metro opened with much.
Speaker 5: Fanfare five seven am. This is a moment in Sydney's history,
Speaker 5: the first time a rail line has crossed underneath the Harbor,
Speaker 5: part full of passengers. The tunnel that took two years
Speaker 5: to dig now takes two minutes to cross.
Speaker 1: It includes twin underwater tunnels, and it took only about
Speaker 1: seven years to build. Its transport system seems far superior
Speaker 1: to ours. Should we be looking across the ditch for
Speaker 1: these ideas.
Speaker 2: What we need to look across the ditch for is
Speaker 2: not just the ideas of what to do, but the
Speaker 2: way that they do them. In Sydney, that new Metro
Speaker 2: line that you mentioned was built during periods of Labor
Speaker 2: being in power is in the state government and the
Speaker 2: Liberals being in power. Both of them supported it. They
Speaker 2: had a cross party accord that kept the project going
Speaker 2: despite cost blowouts, despite others saying no, no, we shouldn't
Speaker 2: be doing this now. That cross party accord between the
Speaker 2: two main parties meant that the project succeeded, and succeeded
Speaker 2: in pretty quick time, which is a fantastic achievement. New
Speaker 2: Zealand needs that cross party approach to long term infrastructure planning.
Speaker 2: That's the thing we need most of all. And to
Speaker 2: make it happen because the political parties also they wanted
Speaker 2: to happen. To make it happen, they need a mechanism
Speaker 2: that will allow them to agree these are the basic
Speaker 2: principles on which we will build our infrastructure. There has
Speaker 2: to be an economic value, There has to be some
Speaker 2: recognition of environmental impacts. There probably has to be some
Speaker 2: equity issue involved it. This going to help communities that
Speaker 2: need help those sorts of things. If they agree on
Speaker 2: the principles, and if our government's plan for the Independent
Speaker 2: Infrastruy Ructure Commission and the Independent National Infrastructure Agency If
Speaker 2: that plan progresses and they do come up with independently
Speaker 2: developed frameworks for assessing projects, then the politicians should be
Speaker 2: able to accept that and take the silly short term
Speaker 2: politics out of it. If we get that, we'll really
Speaker 2: be making progress.
Speaker 1: Can you see it happening.
Speaker 2: Neither nor Labor have a good track record on this.
Speaker 2: They both canceled each other's projects the first chance they
Speaker 2: got in the last two changes of government, so they
Speaker 2: both got to change their ways. The National government, to
Speaker 2: its credit, has proposed this bipartisan framework, but at the
Speaker 2: same time they said Labor and the Greens have to
Speaker 2: understand that we're going to build our roads. Now, that's
Speaker 2: just a crazy way to go into negotiating a cross
Speaker 2: party deal. What the projects are, it should be the
Speaker 2: last thing that's decided. Priority should be to set the criteria.
Speaker 2: What do we want? What kind of country are we building?
Speaker 2: And I would say personally that it's got to have
Speaker 2: a climate framework put into it. It's got to be
Speaker 2: a missions reduction as part of the planning, because if
Speaker 2: we're not doing that now, we're going to be doing
Speaker 2: it soon and we should be doing it now, so
Speaker 2: we need that and then we can start talking about
Speaker 2: what projects fit the criteria. I don't think it's been
Speaker 2: helpful of the government to say that, but we're going
Speaker 2: to have our program anyway. Cross party accords aren't just
Speaker 2: about requiring the opposition to sign up to your ideas.
Speaker 2: They're about compromise and meeting in the middle.
Speaker 1: What kind of country will we see in the future
Speaker 1: if there's not this cross party support.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. We have got ourselves into
Speaker 2: an appalling mess with infrastructure in this country, and we
Speaker 2: see it everywhere, from the state of our hospital buildings,
Speaker 2: to the roads and the railway, the cook Straight ferries,
Speaker 2: the energy development, the lack of wind farms and sol
Speaker 2: that we could have in this country so easily because
Speaker 2: there has been party bickering we'll do this and no,
Speaker 2: we'll do that. And at the same time we've also
Speaker 2: always said, well, it's really important for governments to pay
Speaker 2: down debt, and one of the easy things to do
Speaker 2: is to keep maintenance out of it. If you reduce
Speaker 2: your maintenance budget, nobody sees you're doing that, But you
Speaker 2: get potholes, you get hospitals being run down, those sorts
Speaker 2: of things happen, so it's actually very hard to see
Speaker 2: how we're going to see a change in economic commitment
Speaker 2: to funding projects and to funding the maintenance of projects
Speaker 2: to keep them going. The thing that might make it
Speaker 2: happen is that I think that's probably a much greater
Speaker 2: popular understanding now that the mess we've got ourselves into economically,
Speaker 2: we need to build our way out of it. We
Speaker 2: need to build for better and we need to maintain better.
Speaker 1: Are we being overly ambitious talking about bridges and tunnels?
Speaker 1: We look at more faery options like Sydney has and
Speaker 1: I understand you spoke with cable car company Dopplemire last year.
Speaker 1: Is that feasible?
Speaker 2: In my view? A range of tech alternatives. Electric ferries
Speaker 2: cable cars are two of the options, and there are
Speaker 2: probably and there are more as well, and most of
Speaker 2: them are relatively cheap. Most of them would be relatively
Speaker 2: easy to implement, and therefore we should be trialing them.
Speaker 2: You know, the cable car option. There is a new
Speaker 2: one that's been developed in christ Church that Queenstown's going
Speaker 2: to introduce, which is a kind of hybrid cable car
Speaker 2: come uber in the air amazing, which is an extraordinary thing.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't cost much at all to see whether that
Speaker 2: can work. It wouldn't cost much at all, and it
Speaker 2: could be done in a couple of years to put
Speaker 2: a gondola line from Botany to the airport to see
Speaker 2: if it works. We wouldn't lose anything at all, really,
Speaker 2: but it could be transformative and it could have both
Speaker 2: sort of things could have a role to play rather
Speaker 2: than saying we have to build the biggest and most
Speaker 2: expensive and most difficult thing we can think of and
Speaker 2: that's the only way we'll solve our problems. That is
Speaker 2: a nuts way to approach infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Simon, how should both sides go about getting this cross
Speaker 1: party support?
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is that because we have an
Speaker 2: independent Infrastructure Commission, and because the government is setting up
Speaker 2: an independent National Infrastructure Agency which will receive projects and
Speaker 2: look at financing for projects, we have the bones already
Speaker 2: for cross party support. If the politicians are prepared to
Speaker 2: say to those independent agencies, Okay, you come up with
Speaker 2: the framework and we will sit down with you and
Speaker 2: buy into it. If they're prepared to do that, then
Speaker 2: we really do have the basis, or could have the
Speaker 2: basis for a genuine collaborative approach on these things that
Speaker 2: should be above and beyond politics if they prepare to
Speaker 2: do that. The problem with it is every political party
Speaker 2: sees immediate populist electoral advantage in saying we'll build that road,
Speaker 2: we'll build that cyc away, we'll build that wind farm,
Speaker 2: we will ban that wind farm, whatever it is, and
Speaker 2: you want to get that vote getting populism out of it.
Speaker 2: You want the social greater good to apply and you therefore,
Speaker 2: if those independent agencies are powerful enough, they could be
Speaker 2: the leaders for.
Speaker 1: This an interesting discussion. Thank you for joining us, Simon.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at Inset Herald dot co dot endzet. The Front Page
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