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FeedbackThe flyover: the NZTA promised consultation, but then came silence
By Patrick McCombs
Mt Victoria residents have heard nothing from the New Zealand Transport Agency since it promised to consult us about the developing plans for the Basin Reserve flyover and a second tunnel.
This is despite the roading authority saying it “will be engaging with community groups and other relevant organisations from early October onwards to keep them continually briefed on the current phase of the project as it progresses and, at the same time, to receive any preliminary input that may be passed on to the project team”. The initial options were to be “presented to the community for full consultation” in March next year.
The Mt Victoria Newsletter has advised the NZTA, the regional council and the city council that we “stand ready to facilitate communication between the roading authorities and the community. We will not be campaigning for any particular roading solution, but we will strongly advocate for an effective consultation process.”
We have told them that local residents who will be affected by the roading proposals want an opportunity to sit down quietly with NZTA to discuss
(a) the problem as seen from different perspectives,
(b) possible remedial actions or solutions,
(c) the impacts and costs of the available solutions,
(d) the net advantages of the options.
Being asked to wait to comment till the experts have decided what is needed will not provide an opportunity to influence the plans nor let people feel they have been heard.
The Mt Victoria Residents Association takes a similar view. It is waiting for the opportunity to get involved in the planning process and to represent residents’ views.
But the response has been a dull silence.
It sometimes seems that NZTA must be so busy fighting the wildfire which it ignited at the Kapiti end of our Levin to Airport Road of National Importance that it doesn’t realise it’s burning up large amounts of political capital and goodwill in our neighbourhood. However we need to reflect on the rise of public support for the government’s performance as revealed in recent polls.
There has to be a better way than lying in front of bulldozers to participate in planning for our city, but even that seems unlikely to change the government’s mind. The juggernaut is coming our way with its eyes wide shut.
Patrick McCombs is editor of the monthly Mt Victoria Newsletter.
The Mt Victoria Residents Association expected to be included in early dialogue regarding the options at the Basin Reserve and discussions around a second Mt Victoria tunnel. Disappointingly, we have had no communication from the Transport Agency, despite assurances from them that community consultation would begin in early October.
I made it as clear as I could during both our oral submission to GWRC re: the Regional Land Transport Programme and during my presentation at the Civic Trust’s ‘Around the Basin’ forum that residents are eager to be considered stakeholders and included early in the process. Simply put, our neighbourhood will be profoundly affected by these large infrastructure projects.
The approach to consultation from the responsible agencies has been hopelessly inept since day one. I recall that in the first consultation round on the various tunnel options, the Taxi Federation were “key stakeholders” but that no-one contacted residents!
It seems that in the view of NZTA, having your house demolished didn’t qualify you as a key stakeholder, but driving a taxi did.
Given there have long been plans for grade separation at the Basin Reserve since the 1960s, and land was designated and progressively bought for this since then, none of it should really be a surprise. The De Leuw Cather inspired Urban Motorway Extension, followed by the 1983 Arterial Extension, followed by Tunnellink in 1994 all proposed something more elaborate than is now planned.
It is obvious grade separation is needed to separate east-west and north-south traffic, that grade separation should be on the land long designated for the purpose, and the sooner it happens the better. It is conceivable it can be done without any private property needing to be acquired. It will have significant benefits for pedestrians, cyclists and bus traffic to/from the southern suburbs, as well as removing a major conflict between three schools and the main highway between the airport and the region.
I wouldn’t worry about a second Mt Victoria Tunnel, that wont be going anywhere until grade separation is completed, but again the route for that has decades of history behind it, so should hardly concern Mt Victoria residents.
It will interesting to see how much the issues around this are hijacked by the anti-road Green movement under the shroud of caring about local community interests, but I trust the Mt Victoria Residents’ Association should avoid that happening. If it does, then it will all too easy to dismiss any local legitimate concerns as stonewalling.
You can tell that Libertyscott doesnt live in the area that will be ruined by a new flyover. She’s probably not a follower of cricket either, so she doesnt understand how that sport will be ruined by high-level traffic … And just because something was planned decades ago – this doesn’t mean it has to happen now. If traffic problems are really as bad as some (not all) people believe, then a tunnel under the Basin is the answer to any north-south issues; it’s a plan that’s been around longer than any of the others.
Thank you Libertyscott for your contribution. The Mt Victoria Newsletter (which is not an organ of the residents association) is asking for a forum where the facts can be put on the table and discussed from all points of view. The Civic Trust convened a seminar to get the ball rolling and invited NZTA to present their proposals, or at least their view of the problem and their thinking so far. From their presentation anyone might have thought that they have done no work at all. Their plan is to have it all done by next March and to then drop their proposals and rejected options on the community in a way guaranteed to set up an “us versus them” confrontation. That is such an old-fashioned approach. We just hope that NZTA rapidly develops some more skills in planning, consultation and being a good neighbour and responsible corporate citizen.
Libertyscott – not to rain on your parade with actual facts or anything, but there are a couple of minor issues you seem to have overlooked:
1. While there may have been a SH1 designation in place for some decades, the land around the Basin Reserve is still in the process of acquisition. The shops on the corner of Ellice Street were only purchased by NZTA in 2008, and they are still using the spurious “commercial sensitivity” argument to block OIA requests for the design of the flyover, on the basis that they haven’t yet acquired all the private property necessary.
2. It’s not at all obvious that grade separation is necessary – according to the Ngauranga to Airport Corridor Plan technical reports, the same transit time benefits for public transport users can be achieved by at-grade bus priority measures rather than a huge flyover, as most of the benefits come from improvements to the Golden Mile, not at the Basin Reserve.
3. The impacts on the Basin Reserve and the surrounding neighbourhood are significant, as Opus Consulting note in their technical reports:
“The elevated structure for the grade separation of the Basin Reserve will be visually prominent and be further emphasised due to its location at the termination point of the vista along Kent/Cambridge Terrace. It can also be considered to affect the perception, symbolic character and context of the Basin Reserve and will impact on the overall character of the wider surroundings. In addition to the impact from outside the ground, the grade separation will also have issues with respect to the quality of experience from within the Basin Reserve – from a visual, noise, and change to the existing character point of view and possibly have an impact on the use of the Basin Reserve as an open space with special significance.”
And just to rub the point in, here’s Opus again:
“Furthermore, a grade separated interchange at the Basin Reserve will act as a three- dimensional visual/physical barrier segregating Adelaide Rd from Kent/Cambridge Terrace. This in turn will affect the current continuity of visual experience and urban structure. As such, the elevated leg of the vehicle ramp connecting to Cambridge Terrace will bring significant changes to the existing character of the locality that might be difficult to effectively mitigate.”
4. For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that the heritage and ambience of the Basin Reserve and Mt Victoria are both valueless and worth throwing away for an 11 second improvement in car transit times around the Basin. (NZTA obviously has this view.) The reason so many local residents oppose this dopey scheme is because it makes no economic sense – the Basin Reserve flyover is currently costed at $47 million yet produces only $34 million in benefits; the second Mt Victoria tunnel costs something north of $198 million yet produces less than $100 million in benefits. In short, it’s not an “anti-road Green” agenda, it’s a “let’s not throw away hard-earned taxpayer money on a complete white elephant” agenda. The fact that we will then retain our great neighbourhood and the heritage values of the Basin Reserve are just positive spin-offs from taking a rationalist approach.
Traveller: No there has been no serious plan for a tunnel, that idea was quickly investigated in the early 1990s and ruled out as being exhorbitantly expensive and generating few benefits.
Patrick McCombs: Yes undoubtedly being as open and involved in consultation is a plus. A lot of effort put into explaining the entire end to end thinking and evaluation process would be very helpful, so people can ask questions of it all.
Kent: Yes apologies, acquisition is not complete, but to be fair none of this should be a surprise. There has been planning blight on the whole route for ages. Grade separation is clearly necessary to improve travel times for airport-region traffic, and to remove the pedestrian/traffic conflicts in the area, of course it is a prerequisite to any tunnel duplication. A more strategic view would be pursued the old Tunnellink bypass from the Terrace Tunnel to Mt Victoria Tunnel which would have been dramatically positive for Te Aro and the waterfront, but this isn’t being pursued now (though the inadequacy of the one way system inner city bypass has become increasingly clear).
However, if you’re right and the BCRs are below 1, then time to simply put it in the “wishful thinking one day” list. Projects that generate no net economic return shouldn’t proceed, regardless of mode. I notice $2.6m is already committed to investigating the options and testing the viability. If it comes out a dud, I’ll happily say it should be shelved.
Kent: As you introduced the Ngauranga to Airport Opus Technical Report (Phase One) “in evidence”, why be so selective ?
For example, Opus did say the Basin Reserve Grade Seperation (Option 4) will have a 25 year Benefit Estimate of “only” $34.0M, but the same table in the same report has the 2nd Mt Vic Tunnel/Cobham Drive 4 laning (Option 6) Benefits as $148.5M (not the “less than $100 million in benefits” you claimed). And for some reason you also did not mention that the non-Grade Separation at the Basin Reserve (Option 9) had a 25-year Benefit of -$35.1M. As I read it, the relative benefit of Grade Separation is close to $70M !
I also don’t know which Opus report you are quoting from but THIS same Opus report states the Basin Reserve Grade Separation:
“would improve the connectivity of the Mount Victoria Tunnel and the ICB via Buckle Street or Vivian Street, by effectively reducing both the actual distance travelled and the travel time as a number of intersections are removed for through traffic.
The Basin Reserve grade separation would impact on traffic conditions on approach roads to the Basin Reserve, and adjacent roads. Traffic travelling between the Mount Victoria Tunnel and the ICB is likely to divert via the Buckle Street end of the Basin Reserve. Traffic volumes on all other arms of the Basin Reserve are forecast to fall.
The additional capacity at the Basin Reserve would result in a diversion of traffic from Evans Bay Parade to the Mount Victoria Tunnel. Evans Bay Parade is forecast to experience up to a 50% reduction in traffic volumes. Elsewhere, traffic volumes on Taranaki Street are forecast to divert to Adelaide Road/ Cambridge Terrace as delays at Adelaide Road/ Basin Reserve intersection would decrease as traffic diverts away from the Rugby Street arm of the Basin Reserve.”
As for your so called BCR, all you have done is applied the latest cost estimate against the modeled benefits from a report two years ago . . . The Opus Technical report itself did not provide any BCRs. So what is the real BCR, well the Project/Package Information Sheet provided to Wellington Regional Land Transport Strategy states this project has benefits of $48M against a then estimated cost of $34M giving an official BCR of 2.4
No one is denying the adverse local residential impact of this proposal, but these do need to be measured against the TRANSPORT benefits that supports the wider city’s growth. As a commuter from the suburbs I waste hours of my time in avoidable congestion. If this city is to grow it needs to find solutions . . . the question with improving our roads is not if but how.
Tony – Before you get too carried away with the details of BCRs, remember what they’re for; they simply provide a post-facto economic rationalisation for the decisions that have already been taken to build roads. They are a form of economic whitewash, not a rational basis for resource allocation in society.
The transport economic models used by NZTA are so heavily skewed with internal biases that Bernie Madoff would blush with embarrassment – they are a catalogue of dodgy accounting. For instance, here’s a list of a few things that aren’t included in the “costs” column of the N2A BCRs (i.e. these things have no value to society, according to NZTA):
- The heritage values of the Basin Reserve
- The additional noise pollution that comes from putting a road 7 metres up in the air
- The additional vehicle pollution that will come from inducing traffic into the area
- The diminishment of local property values
- The additional health costs from higher vehicle kilometres resulting from the induced traffic
On the last one, for instance, we know from empirical data that every dollar spent on roads results in another dollar in costs in the health sector, due to the impact of pollution and vehicle crashes. Is this included in the economic models? Of course not.
In fact, one transport planner said to me that “if we include all these other costs, building roads wouldn’t make any economic sense!” So it’s clear that the purpose of BCRs is simply to justify the road-building frenzy; no-one actually believes the models to be an accurate representation of real life.
But even using the dodgy accounting, flawed assumptions and deliberately skewed calculations of NZTA’s own models, neither the Basin Reserve flyover nor the second Mt Victoria Tunnel make any financial sense. $34 million in benefits will never repay $47 million in costs, in the case of the Basin. And you can tell that a project is a stupid idea when even the creative accounting employed by NZTA can’t make it pay.