COMMENT: Transport Minister Phil Twyford mounts his defence against claims the Government is turning its back on roading.
There has been a lot of commentary and confusion on the Transport Agency's 12 re-evaluated projects road.
Firstly, people like Heather du Plessis-Allan are saying the Government isn't building these roads (Herald on Sunday, July 14). Not true. All the projects are either going ahead unchanged, have been re-designed so that they give taxpayers value for money and prioritise safety, or will go ahead in the future when funds are available. The only highway that is still being re-evaluated by NZTA is the East-West Link, which was going to cost an eye-watering $327 million per kilometre under the last Government. We know that there needs to be better access for freight to that area, so that's why we left $800m in the Auckland Transport Alignment Plan to fund a more cost-effective option.
Sam Stubbs repeated the claim that the 12 projects NZTA re-evaluated were "shovel ready" under the last Government – this is simply not true. Even just going through the project pages on the NZTA website shows that most of them didn't even have a preferred route before the last election. He also said that "the 12 roading projects passed the economic return test a long time ago" – again, not true. Some hadn't even had a benefit cost analysis done. Stubbs mentioned that "…the business minds want roads", which isn't 100 per cent accurate either as group managing director of Mainfreight Don Braid said last year that rail is a necessity and that it can be second corridor to take the load off the roading infrastructure.
Our Government has doubled the amount of lane kilometres being brought up to scratch every year. In total, we're spending around $2 billion to operate, maintain and renew over 80,000km of local roads – 22 per cent more than the previous Government.