Paved With Good Intentions

Nearly a century ago Northland's roads had low priority in the national roading strategy and local authorities often did not have sufficient funds to improve roading.

How much has changed?

Roads of National Significance, or RONS to use the ubiquitous acronym, are part of a $4 billion government strategy to 'stimulate' economic development. Seven RONS have been earmarked for build and one is an 18 kilometre extension of SH1 from Puhoi to Warkworth. Eventually it will be extended another 20 kilometres to Wellsford at an estimated cost for both of $1.7 billion.

What's hard to navigate, much less to understand, is the plethora of statistics used to justify the roading projects. Northland MP, Mike Sabin says the upgrade is a 'key driver' (and the pun is probably unintended) of economic growth for Northland and the region's economy will benefit by around $45 million per year. But since those are 2011 statistics he says the figures may be higher now "as they allude to the fact cost benefits will increase as time passes."

Labour's transport spokesman, Phil Twyford, told The Advocate last December that spending that much to make the road a four-lane highway wasn't justified and Labour would invest $400 million making the existing road safer. Labour subsequently labelled the road north of Auckland as a 'holiday highway', thus ignoring the 158,300 people who live and work here and for whom the road is primary link.

Arguably of greater significance when calculating benefits is not so much what comes in from Auckland and other points south but what goes out. Mike Sabin says an estimated $800 million (or 15% of Northland's GDP totalling $5.2 billion in 2011) is generated by exports out of the region by road. This figure also includes the 'impact' of visitors travelling north.

What seems not to have been mentioned in the rhetoric is that the RONS to Warkworth (including the future extension to Wellsford) doesn't even reach Northland. It falls around 10 kilometres short of Te Hana which is considered Northland's border. But it will literally by-pass the notorious traffic-stopping Warkworth

bottle neck.

And what of Northland roads? There are numerous arterial routes crying out for upgrade and as Deputy Mayor, Ann Court, points out, during a deluge 50% of Northlanders can't even get to a doctor. Why does the junction at Waipapa Road and SH1 still not have a roundabout despite 20 years of asking? Why is Pungaere Road, the major access route to the important tourist attraction of Puketi Forest, still not fully sealed?

In a nutshell, Northland's roads are funded by the government out of petrol tax and road user charges but distributed by various local authorities. Currently allocated by government for Northland over three years is $155 million for local road maintenance, operations and renewal and $96 million for state highways.

Councils also allocate a certain amount of ratepayer money to the road coffers and Northland ratepayers currently contribute $280 per head of population. That's a staggering fourteen times more per head of population than Auckland City ratepayers.

Whether we like it or not, rural roads aren't high priority under the current criteria used to calculate funding. RONS and roads in Auckland and other cities take precedence even as a death-by-accident ratio is factored in. That's why, for instance, there's no roundabout at the Waipapa junction; it's not deemed 'unsafe' enough despite a myriad of fender benders. Pungaere Road, on the other hand, does have a consistent record of injury accidents and yet still isn't fully sealed despite carrying an official benefit-to-cost ratio of eight which, as Ann Court points out, is a significant ranking.

"Any project with a benefit-to-cost ratio over four is almost guaranteed funding. Even in Auckland you'd be hard-pressed to get that sort of ratio but the government has made it virtually impossible through the regional land transport programme to get seal for rural roads because they want that money invested in RONS."

Indeed, Northland's applications for road funding are often out-gunned even by the region's only city. Given the traffic volumes and cost-benefit analysis of, say, a roundabout at the junction of the road to Dargaville and where Whangarei Hospital is located, poor old Waipapa can't compete. In fact only three roading projects have been approved for Northland in recent times - one for Kaipara and two for Whangarei. The remainder of the region is fighting a losing battle unless the funding system is changed from the gross domestic product argument which relates to taxes paid to one (for example) of export dollars generated per region.

If export dollar earnings were the criteria many regions would rate highly. While Auckland is vitally important as a consumer region it doesn't generate the export dollars from food, forestry and fishing like Northland, oil from Taranaki or dairy from Southland.

An increase in petrol tax of 3 cents per litre for the next three years (which is over and above the 61.29 cents per litre tax we already pay) was passed under a rare urgent sitting of Parliament on a Saturday night in May. Transport Minister, Gerry Brownlee, said the money will be spent on specific roads of national significance.

Quite what percentage of that revenue will be spent on the RONS that doesn't reach Northland isn't known. What is certain is that the increase in petrol tax won't be used to improve existing Northland roads.

How much time will the RONS from Puhoi to Warkworth save?

• Assuming a truck using the existing 18 kilometres of road averages 60 kph, it would take 18 minutes

to complete.

• The same truck averaging 80 kp/h on the new 18 kilometre RONS would take 13.5 minutes to complete.

• On that hypothetical basis - and driving from Auckland using the Road of National Significance - it will take 4.5 minutes less to arrive 10 kilometres short of Northland.