Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatū-Tararua Highway’s cost blowout

The extra cost is partly blamed on the addition of a shared user path affecting the Parahaki Bridge design on the Te Ahu a Turanga Manawatū-Tararua Highway project.

By Leanne Warr

A cost blowout on the Manawatū-Tararua Highway has been stated as one of the reasons for proposing a toll on the project, due for completion in about nine months.

Minister for Transport Simeon Brown noted in Parliament on September 18 that the project had a $200 million cost blowout.

“The reality is the tolling proposal has been put out as a way to recover some of those revenues in order to protect those other parts of the country which need road maintenance and new infrastructure being built in them,” he told the House.

Brown said the increased cost was due to several factors including a high inflationary environment, supply chain issues and the previous Labour Government’s late addition of a shared user path across the length of the project.

“This affected the Parahaki River Bridge design, increasing the complexity and cost of the structure.”

When the project was first announced in 2019, it was going to cost $620 million to complete, but the latest total project cost approved by the board of New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) in May this year amounted to $824.1 million.

Brown said tolling was being considered to help cover the cost increase from those who would use the road, while those who chose not to pay would have two free alternatives.

Those alternatives would be the Pahīatua Track and the Saddle Rd.

But in a public meeting held on September 17, many residents spoke out saying those two roads were unsafe, while Tararua District Mayor Tracey Collis said the council could not afford the maintenance bill on those roads, particularly if more people than estimated by NZTA would continue to use the alternate routes.

At that same meeting, Labour spokesman for transport, Tangi Utikere, and MP Kieran McAnulty were adamant the highway project was “on budget and on time”.

Utikere said on Friday that his understanding is information about additional costs had just come to light and that the NZTA board had approved any costs, so they had been budgeted for.

“At the time the tolling proposal was announced, the project sat at $620m.”

He noted that NZTA was still reporting the project would cost about $620 million as recently as last Thursday.

Utikere said he maintained the view that people in the Tararua District, Manawatū, Wairarapa and Central Hawke’s Bay should not be lumped with a toll as a revenue-gathering exercise at such as late stage in the process for “infrastructure that was promised to be delivered as a replacement for a broken road”.