4 minute read
Transporting New Zealand
Nick Leggett
chief executive officer
THE WAIT CONTINUES FOR TRANSMISSION GULLY
The words “Transmission Gully” once meant a promising solution to Wellington’s squeezed northern corridor. They are now the bywords of failure. When uttered at this year’s summer barbecues, they elicit a knowing shake of the head from Wellingtonians used to years of bad news about the project.
Transporting New Zealand attended a meeting before Christmas where Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency advised us, before it hit the media, that Transmission Gully would not open in time for Christmas. We were told that the builder contracted to deliver the Transmission Gully project ran out of time to complete all of the compliance tasks necessary to have the road open.
Out of the 100 safety and quality assurance tests that need to be met before the road can safely and legally open, only 34 had been accepted by the independent reviewer as meeting the required specifications before Christmas. We were also informed that as at 3 December 2021, only 17 of the 45 consent tasks that needed to be fulfilled for the road to open also had been achieved.
Reports of flawed chipseal, ‘flushing’, and water seepage through the road’s surface are also of major concern. Repairs over the past few months have apparently been unsuccessful, which indicates that the long-term resilience of the road is, at best, uncertain. Flushing is a serious safety hazard as it results in a smooth and sticky surface texture due to an excess of bitumen, which can become very slippery in wet conditions.
None of this was any surprise to us at Transporting New Zealand. If I’m not mistaken, the latest delay was the fifth projected opening date that has come and gone. Pretty much as soon as the building of the route began, rumours, many of which were later confirmed, started circling of issues between Waka Kotahi, the Greater Wellington Regional Council, the Wellington Gateway Partnership and the road builders, CPB HEB. Scepticism the budget would be adequate and the programme realistic was largely born from Waka Kotahi having to pour at least another $400 million in on top of the initial $850 million estimate.
From the start, Transmission Gully suffered from a classic case of overpromising a world-class road on a significantly less than world-class budget. The previous government can take a good deal of responsibility for that. However, it is also obvious that the present government is a reluctant inheritor of the project and sees itself as having little political skin in the game.
Ministers and even local Labour MPs have stayed pretty quiet on the whole debacle, except to criticise National over the public-private-partnership model that Labour ideologically opposes. In some ways, the more the project falls behind, the more they can hold it up as a failure of the private sector in infrastructure provision.
Depressingly, Transmission Gully is just the headline act in a series of nationally significant strategic roading projects beset with problems. North Island transport operators will remember the emergency repairs needed to the Kapiti and Waikato expressways not long after opening due to road surface and subsidence problems. Then, of course, there are the much-needed new roads that, despite going through expensive planning and consenting processes, have never even see the light of day – most notably the East-West Link in Auckland.
Unfortunately, time and time again our government institutions prove that we do not have the bureaucratic competence or political steadiness to effectively manage big transport projects. This is a massive problem, not only for our sector but for the whole economy, because we desperately need a lot more modern infrastructure to satisfy the growing demand for the movement of people and freight.
The fact that Transmission Gully will at least one day be open, unlike the mythical East-West Link, is, I guess, some comfort to Wellingtonians and the lower North Island freight sector.
At this point, it is natural to want to cut corners to get the road open, but we want, and deserve, for it to be as safe
and as durable as possible. For now, we will just have to wait a little longer, put up with the appalling traffic on the coastal route, and complain about it over those barbecues.
Finally, just a reminder to operators that as of 1 February, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency is imposing a new condition for all heavy-vehicle permit applications that the operator must be in full compliance with their RUC obligations. This means that transport operators must keep up with their RUC payments to make sure future permit applications are not declined, the permitted period shortened or the permit revoked.
No additional charges are being imposed on operators through this policy change; it is just part of Waka Kotahi’s push to make sure all eligible road users are paying their fair share. For operators already paying the correct amount of RUC, nothing will change.
