Official advice from the Infrastructure Commission shows the government could be set to spend 10 percent of its total budget for new infrastructure for the next 25 years on one roading project.[Emphasis added]The project "Accelerating Northland Expressway" is a four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei, which the government has agreed in principle to speed up as part of its Roads of National Significance programme.
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Sent in early July, the advice document reads: "Based on historic annual investment by central government and Treasury's projections of future GDP, we estimate this project alone could consume 10 percent of the total non-maintenance/renewal investment for the next 25 years across all types of central government infrastructure (roads, hospitals, schools, defence, justice, public admin, etc)."
And of course, there's a high risk of cost overruns, meaning it could cost twice as much.
The opportunity cost of this is appalling. Every kilometre of this road we build is schools, hospitals, and new government buildings we don't. Not to mention the train tracks and other public transport infrastructure needed to decarbonise our cities. If it actually gets built, people should be thinking "there are our hospitals" every time a truck goes by on it.
This project is simply madness. There are many, many, far better things to build - including, no doubt, other roads in Northland (or maybe some bridges). We should build them instead. National's truck-highway obsession is simply wasteful madness.