Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has welcomed the chance to enjoy one's 'hair flowing in the wind' on a faster road. Photo / Mark Mitchell
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
The prime minister was having fun on July 1 with the announcement that the speed limit on the Pūhoi-to-Warkworth expressway is rising to 110km/h.
“You can do your best impression of Liam Lawson as you are shooting up there, hair flowing in the wind,” Christopher Luxon told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB.
A joke at his own expense, good on him!
But could we back up the Formula One fun car for just a moment? Is it really okay for the PM to encourage people to try to drive like they’re in a race?
Both Luxon and Transport Minister Chris Bishop have made the point that expressways judged safe enough for 110km/h are the safest roads we have. And they’re right. This is because those roads have separated carriageways, good median and side barriers, wide shoulders, gentle corners, no blind spots, no nearby trees to crash into, good water runoff and the best-available road seal.
If all our roads were like that, we’d probably have very few deaths and serious injuries.
But we’d also be bankrupt, because they are extremely expensive. They come at the expense of hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, including safer roads built to a lesser standard.
Here’s the equation. If the 20km Pūhoi-to-Warkworth expressway had been built as a three-lane road, with the second lane alternating so there are lots of passing opportunities, the money left over might have paid for about 1000km of safer rural roads.
Why is that important? Because 68% of serious crashes occur on rural roads.
One other thing about the thrill of driving with the wind in your hair. This was the third time the new speed limit on that road has been announced. Transport Minister Chris Bishop did it in May and his predecessor in the role, Simeon Brown, did it last year.
Why announce it again? Because July 1 was the deadline for all the speed limits lowered under the previous Government to be raised again. Bishop and Luxon calculated that the chance to channel your inner Liam Lawson would hog the headlines, and all the schools and local communities that have been pleading to keep their safer, lower speeds would not get a look in. They were right.
To be clear: For road-safety campaigners, the 110km/h speed limit is a red herring. A distraction from the focus we should have on how to keep all the other roads safe. Because it isn’t possible to turn them all into expressways.
Keeping good areas to walk your dog off-leash has been a hot issue, as reported recently in Love this City. But the other side of dogs in Auckland is the 1200 reported attacks of dogs on people each year, a similar number on other animals, and the 15,000 reports of dogs roaming. The real numbers of all those things are thought to be far higher.
The reported numbers have grown by 50% since 2020, when lockdowns prompted many people to get a nice cute puppy.
Auckland Council says dealing with this is a “top priority”. It’s added $5 million to the animal management budget, which will pay for more staff, more patrols, more kennels and a new Pukekohe Adoption and Education Centre. There are targeted desexing programmes in high-risk/high-roaming areas and registration drives.
And there’s a new advertising and marketing campaign with the theme “For you, your dog and your neighbours”. The council says the aim is “to connect with dog owners’ personal motivations for keeping their dogs contained and shows how roaming dogs are affecting communities”.
The campaign has been paid for by revenue from infringement fees issued to dog owners who have failed to register their dogs. “Although it will be region-wide,” the council says, “activity will be focused on audiences in the south and parts of West Auckland where communities are most at risk from roaming dogs and dog attacks.”
The chair of the council’s Regulatory and Safety Committee, councillor Josephine Bartley, says, “Too many dog owners think it’s okay to let their dogs have a wander. It’s not. We have kids scared to walk to school and people living alone who don’t want to leave their homes in case they get bitten.
“It’s also not fair on the dogs to let them out on their own, as they could be hit by a car, attacked by another animal or be impounded.”
Bartley is advocating for changes to the Dog Control Act 1996, to give councils more power. “I have recommended that councils take a stronger enforcement role, as communities have had enough of roaming dogs. I’d like to see more penalties for people who don’t care about their dogs, or what they get up to while on the loose.”
What’s the best way to build flood-resistant housing projects in Auckland? How do you give them all the other values you might want: affordability, a community focus, environmental protections, not to mention making them good to look at and live in?
Forty students from institutions around the country have come up with some pretty fine answers. This week they’ve been taking part in ArchEngBuild, a three-day competition modelled on the 48-hour Film Festival.
Students from across the construction disciplines – architecture, engineering, construction, landscape architecture and sustainability planning – met each other for the first time at the University of Auckland on Tuesday, got divided into teams of four, and given their assignment.
They had to create “a building concept for a community” that met all the values above, and was adaptable to changing needs and landscapes, could be put in place after “an event” and would last a long time.
The site they were given to do it on was the bush area at the bottom of the Domain. A site that never will be built on, I imagine, but one that invited the students to think hard about what to do when environmental and cultural constraints are critical.
I spent Thursday afternoon watching their presentations. All 10 groups used a modular approach, usually with buildings whose individual prefabricated components could be trucked to the site, picked up by a crane and slotted together in many different ways.
This can be done with walls and frames, but most of the student groups proposed the approach for whole apartments, or for whole units. You want a three-bedroom apartment? We’ll slot three units together, one of which will have all the plumbing.
Most used cross-laminated timber (CLT), a kind of plywood for giants that’s extremely rigid, naturally fire-resistant and can easily be cut off-site into all the shapes you might want. Several used galvanised poles with a screw end, instead of normal foundations.
And there were many other innovations. The thing that struck me was that this was a generation who knew how to use all these things and seemed keen to do so. Whereas much in-real-life construction doesn’t.
Why not? Regulations get in the way, so does the cost structure of the industry, and so, perhaps, does the dispirited and disorganised state of tertiary training.
Other elements also stood out. Most groups centred their projects on floodwater detention: having large green areas for recreation in good times that turn into reservoirs when the floods come. Again, there are apartment blocks and larger projects going up around Auckland that do not have this, even though we know floods are our biggest natural threat and floodwater detention has been proven, right here, to work. Why not?
A few groups put houses on stilts, floating among the trees. One even proposed an entire multi-storey block on stilts, in a large circular shape with an open forested area in the middle.
One group provided two car parks per apartment; none of the others mentioned cars at all. Almost all of them recognised the value of building a community, with shops, offices and other commercial development alongside the residential features and community facilities. One group said they started with the premise that the project should be great for children to live in.
Most said they would have all different ages living there. Not retirement villages here and dormitory suburbs for young families way over there, but everyone mixed in together.
I’ll say it again. Why aren’t we building more places like that anyway?
The winning entry exemplified many of these ideas. Rauhītia, created by students from the University of Auckland, Otago University and Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, was strongly focused on flood management, with timber buildings on stilts, a water reservoir and community facilities to bring people together.
“The main theme this year was resilience,” said one of the judges, Ferdinand Oswald, a senior lecturer in Architectural Technology at the University of Auckland. “It was about building for hazards, but the winning team understood that it is about community at its heart.”
“These students are going to change the building industry,” said the judges, referring to all the contestants. “They are hitting the real world with the right attitude and focus on collaboration and innovation to overcome the significant challenges facing our industry and communities.”
Architecture student Enoch Shi, who was part of the winning team, said: “It was pretty intense, I think I got two hours sleep each night.”
Auckland now has a clear commitment from the Government that there will be a “regional deal”. It will be a “long-term partnership”, say Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Local Government Minister Simon Watts, to “increase economic growth, create jobs and boost productivity”.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed by the ministers and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.
Some of it, you might think, is stuff they should always have been doing. “Improved central government coordination,” for example, “ensuring the right agencies are around the table” for planning and decision-making. Governments always promise that.
There will also be access to new funding and financing tools, which councils have been crying out for. But making Crown-owned land rateable hasn’t been mentioned and nor has allowing councils to keep the GST paid on rates.
The deal will not fulfil Wayne Brown’s “get Wellington out of our way” ambition, but it’s something.
And it comes with some imperatives. Councils must “comprehensively adopt central Government priority reforms such as Local Water Done Well, Resource Management Act reform and Going for Housing Growth”, Bishop says.
“We also expect that councils will go above legal and regulatory minimum requirements to unlock housing growth including around rapid transit corridors and where central government has invested in infrastructure.”
Auckland is already on board with water reform. But the council is yet to debate the new demands for greater housing density, covered in Love this City last week. Bishop wants 15-storey minimum heights for buildings near some railway stations, which will not be welcome by everyone.
Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty will also get a regional deal, along with the Queenstown Lakes district. But spare a thought for Wellington. If supercharged planning for urban centres is the way ahead, isn’t the need for this greatest in the city with the most precarious economy and the biggest infrastructure problems?
Speaking of the road to Whangārei, there’s a hot dispute underway between economists about the true extent of its value.
Last year the Northland Corporate Group (NCG), representing large businesses, asked the NZ Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) to analyse the benefits of the remaining stages, from Warkworth to Whangārei.
NZIER’s report was glowing. GDP could rise by $1.2 billion a year by 2050, it said. The road had the potential to unlock $38.3b in regional investment and create 5000 new businesses and 5960 new jobs.
This report has been frequently quoted by the Government and the road is now being planned.
But Parliament’s Transport and Infrastructure Select Committee wasn’t convinced, and asked independent economist Simon Chapple to review the NZIER’s findings.
Chapple didn’t pull his punches. “The NZIER report is advocacy research, paid for by people with monetary skin in the game,” he wrote, “... meaning its conclusions need to be regarded with caution by the public.” He could see benefits closer to $3.7b, only a tenth of what NZIER suggested, and he said the costs of the road were very uncertain.
NZIER chief executive Jason Shoebridge has rejected the criticism. He said NZIER stands by its work and “at no time was the project team put under pressure, explicitly or implicitly, by our client to arrive at a particular finding on this project”.
The reason the costs are uncertain is that a full cost-benefit analysis hasn’t been possible, as “the full route hasn’t even been designed yet”.
The Green Party’s Julie Anne Genter, a member of the select committee, said Chapple’s report was “scathing”. She called for improvements to the existing roads that don’t rely on it becoming an expensive four-lane highway, and greater investment in passenger services.
How about this: a wharenui (meeting house) made from neon crocheted wool.
Wharenui Harikoa was created by Lissy (Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Kahu) and Rudi Robinson-Cole (Taranaki, Ngāti Pāoa, Waikato, Ngāti Tahu/Ngāti Whaoa) and will be centre-stage at the Civic, July 5-27, as part of the final wrap for Matariki 2025.
It’s free to experience, but bookings through Auckland Live are recommended.
The light trail Tūrama, Taurima and Tūhono, from Myers Park to the waterfront, continues until July 13, and most of the other exhibitions and displays are ongoing until then as well.
The big performance highlight is Te Korakora i Takutai, a free concert next Thursday evening in Takutai Square, Britomart, featuring Te Matatini Festival finalists Angitu Kapa Haka, plus Pere, Melodownz, Rubi Du and others.
Find out more at matarikifestival.org.nz.
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