Simon Wilson's Auckland election diary: Judith Collins on transport

Judith Collins speaks at the launch of National's transport Upper North Island transport policy on Friday. Photo / Peter Meecham

COMMENT:

Judith Collins told jokes during her big Upper North Island transport speech on Friday. Sample: "National expects that Mayor Goff and his councillors will welcome today's announcements."

You knew they were jokes because she stopped speaking and smirked at the crowd, who, after a brief hesitation, laughed. The word that springs to mind is imperious.

Which is perhaps the right tone to adopt when you are announcing the "biggest" spendup in New Zealand history, when you know it will cost twice as much as the amount you've mentioned – she said $17 billion for the region but how does $35 billion sound? – and will require you to borrow truckloads, nay, trainloads of money. And when you know perfectly well much of it won't happen anyway.

True, I'm just guessing at what Judith Collins knows perfectly well. But let's put it this way. She should know that digging a tunnel through the Brynderwyn Hills is a "significantly more expensive" option for improving transport between Northland and Auckland, according to analysis by Waka Kotahi, the NZ Transport Agency.

She says it would be tolled. Okay then, what would you pay? $50 a trip? More? Comparable tolls in Europe are that high.

What would Judith say – it's always worth asking – if this was Labour's programme? She'd laugh her head off and attack them for waste, unproven need and an apparently spectacular ignorance of the transport projects already underway.

Take the idea of running heavy rail to the airport via a spur line from Puhinui, which is an existing station, just west of Manukau, on both the Eastern and Southern lines. It's a cheaper option, said Collins, than either the Government's old plan to run light rail down Dominion Rd, or its new idea of building a part-elevated, part-underground rapid "metro line" to the airport.

She's right about that.

But the comparison is misguided. Right now, the Government and Auckland Transport are building a new Puhinui interchange for rail and bus, with priority bus lanes planned for highway 20B to the airport.

It's part of a larger project for the city's southeast, which includes a rapid Eastern Busway from Panmure through Pakuranga to Botany, and another rapid busway from Botany to Manukau. The Puhinui interchange is set to open next year; work on the Eastern Busway is also well underway.

Trains on the Eastern and Southern lines out of Britomart will run at least every 10 minutes. If you want to get to the airport by train, you'll take either line, get off at Puhinui, ride the escalator to the airport bus, which will take you directly, without stopping, to the airport.

In other words, although the Government has failed to make a song and dance about it, rail to the airport is almost with us now. Think of that bus as nothing more than the shuttle at a large airport, delivering you to the right terminal.

The interchange is costed at $70 million and the 20B highway upgrade at $59 million. Compare that to the cost of the heavy rail spur National wants to build from Puhinui to the airport: $1.5 billion. Not a typo. National's plan is over 10 times more expensive.

Artist's impression of the Puhinui Interchange integrated transport hub for bus and trains at Puhinui Station. Image / Supplied

The rest of Judith Collins' infrastructure announcement was full of projects like that: expensive ways to do things that don't need doing, or which are already being done, or are planned to be done, more cheaply.

The centrepiece was a four-lane highway from Whangārei to Tauranga, complete with tunnels not only under the Brynderwyns, but under the Waitematā harbour and the Kaimai Ranges too. It's not costed, and that's no surprise, because if you multiplied her entire front bench's phone numbers together you wouldn't get to a high enough number.

The waste of money isn't related only to the tunnels and other big components, it also applies to the rest of the road. Some parts of it are lucky to see 6000 vehicles a day. By comparison, the two-lane Franklin Rd in Freemans Bay carries 14,000 vehicles a day.

Why are tunnels best for a new Waitematā harbour crossing and why would they be multi-modal, carrying trains, cars and trucks? Tunnels dedicated to mass transit would be cheaper; a new bridge for that purpose would be cheaper again.

Collins did some tough talking about the new crossing: she said it would involve "a tremendous amount of complex engineering", which is true, and that it would be all planned and ready to build by 2028.

She called this timeline "ambitious", which is also true, and it was her way of declaring her intention to sort out the Resource Management Act. But that timeline is the same one the Government committed to last year. She was merely announcing the Government's schedule as her own.

National Party leader Judith Collins with, from left, finance spokesperson Paul Goldsmith, transport spokesperson Chris Bishop and deputy leader Gerry Brownlee. Photo / Peter Meecham

Collins proposed to find the money for her plans by allowing Waka Kotahi to borrow more. That will play havoc with the agency's existing spending and she didn't say what would be chopped. Saving a few hundred mill from cancelling SkyPath, which she threatened, will not go nearly far enough to solve the problem.

What will the Government's response be? We may find out this week, with the release of a new Government Policy Statement on transport. The Greens, also, are yet to announce their transport strategy.

By now, though, it's become clear Labour has brought much of this on itself. Transport should have been a shining light of progress. Instead, the light rail plans have collapsed and the $12 billion January spending plans focused so much on roads, it's difficult for Labour credibly to articulate a progressive transport vision for the future.

Artist's impression of light rail on Queen Street. Image / Supplied

With the high ground on transport planning currently unoccupied, Collins has had a go at climbing up there herself. And there are positives in her plan, including a much stronger commitment to public transport, including more money for ferries, electrification of the main trunk line to Pokeno, and more rapid busways.

But still, so many questions. She wants more buses instead of light rail, or metro rail, but where will they all go when they get to town? They physically won't fit. What's the ferry plan, really, and will it be electric? Where's the cycling plan? And why does she think a rail line from the North Shore could connect to Britomart, when that station has just been rebuilt without that capacity, while the new Aotea Station will be built for it? Are National's transport boffins paying any attention at all?