Rimu

$22 billion on just one 95km road ($232 million per km)

(everyone knows roading budgets usually blow out - the total final cost of Transmission Gully appears to be $2.5bn – double the projected cost of $1.25bn).

$22,000,000,000 on just one road? - Greater Auckland

Last year, I posted about the challenges I faced, trying to daylight public-interest information about the government’s Roads of National Significance programme. As I wrote then, The paper also suggests the government’s plan was to commit to this PPP without … Continued

Greater Auckland
Mar 25 at 3:08amWeb
Show threadBaconWrappedEnigma3d ago
Is anybody held accountable or are there any incentive structures to prevent it from happening in the future?
Show threadRimu3d ago
8 months till the election. They haven’t started work on this yet so it’ll probably come to nothing if they lose.
Show threadDave3d ago

How many years of free public transport would $22B buy?

I recall the 50% price cut during COVID (for the whole country) cost the government a few hundred million for a year. This was during COVID so it didn’t get higher uptake, but let’s assume there was a higher uptake and make it $500M for 50% off per year, or 1B for free public transport per year.

We could have free public transport for everyone for 22 years for the price of this one road.

Show threadRimu3d ago

In the article they came up with a few other things 22B would buy:

  • four City Rail Links ($5.5b)
  • seven fully equipped Dunedin hospitals ($3b)
  • seven Cook Strait ferry terminals ($3b)
  • 99 contract-cancellations for no Cook Strait Ferries ($222m)
  • fully funded 7kwh solar panel and battery systems for all 700,000 dwellings in Auckland and Northland ($21b)
  • 169 times the annual walking and cycling budget in the 2024 GPS ($130m)
  • Enough funding to run the Te Huia train between Auckland and Hamilton for 3780 years…
  • … or, how about free passenger rail across the whole country for effectively forever?
  • four and a half Northwest Busways ($5b)
  • seven Airport to Botany Busways ($3b)
  • 22 twice-built International Convention Centres ($1b)
Show threaddeadbeef790005h ago
It buys a hell of a lot of post-parliamentary corporate directorships.
Show threadDave4m ago
We really need a better way of managing this risk. I don’t have any suggestions but the blatant bribery is a pretty big problem to democracy.
Show threadphilanthropicoctopus3d ago
How much is that per centimeter?
Show threadfreshcow3d ago
$2320 per cm; or $232 per mm
Show threadphilanthropicoctopus20h ago

Thanks

That’s absolutely insane. Imagine if that was the number in the proposed plan. Would have been squashed instantly