Is Auckland's light rail the Government's biggest bungle?
Tuesday, 22 October 2019
OPINION: The shambles surrounding Auckland's proposed light rail scheme has a lot in common with those popular television documentary series that unpick the causes of air disasters.
A chain of decisions, almost entirely by Government, have taken a project that was progressing well and turned it into an embarrassing mess, in a way that flies in the face of why Auckland went through the painful process of local body amalgamation a decade ago.
Light rail will be the costliest public transport project in the country, and one that should transform parts of Auckland.
The pathway to today's mess is worth re-tracing.
**READ MORE:
* Auckland's light rail: Under Queen St and over Mt Eden, the Super Fund's tunnelling, or flying, tram
* Auckland light rail to Māngere delayed as talks on who will deliver it continue
* Light rail reality: The six power point slides that stopped a city**
The idea of a light rail scheme in increasingly bus-congested Auckland was revealed by the council agency Auckland Transport (AT) at the end of 2014.
It took Auckland Council by surprise, already struggling to get the downtown underground rail project City Rail Link across the line with the then-National-led Government.
AT was allowed to press on with its study, and had a keen part-funder in the wings in the form of CAF, the Spanish train builder which had supplied the city's fleet of 57 electric trains.
There was an in-house project team, and an early, perhaps naive ambition, that a start could be made before the city hosted the 2017 World Masters Games.
By late 2016, freshly installed Mayor Phil Goff had light rail as an election pledge to deliver, and both the Greens and Labour got behind the idea.
Design and technical exploratory work continued at AT - the agency which designed and started work on the City Rail Link, a large and technically challenging $4.4 billion project to run twin rail tunnels from the downtown terminus to connect with the Western Line at Mt Eden.
The formation of the Labour-led coalition in late 2017 seemed heaven-sent for light rail, with the Government promising to fully-fund it, rather than the traditional half-share.
At that point, the old saying 'he (or she) who pays the piper, calls the tune' should be noted.
The Government under Transport Minister Phil Twyford decided the project should move from AT to the Government's transport agency NZTA, under his own purview.
NZTA had no expertise in developing urban transit systems, and experienced AT staff who had worked on light rail followed the project across from AT to NZTA, to continue the progress of the past three years.
A spade would be put in the ground by the end of the term of government.
In May 2018, cabinet asked NZTA to evaluate an initial quite different light rail proposal, sent unsolicited from NZ Infra, a coalition between the Government's NZ Super Fund and Canada's infrastructure investor CDPQ.
The coalition, in material obtained by Stuff, proposed a very different approach to the traditional street-based system.
Their's would be fully-automated, completely separated from other traffic, with a tunnel downtown under Queen Street, some portions at ground level, and some on elevated railways.
It would build, own and run the system in perpetuity, taking a lot of the risk, but also a healthy return for the part it proposed to fund.
Things went awry from there, the clock was stopped on pursuing NZTA's proposal, and now 17 months later the recommendation on whether NZ Infra or the original AT-initiated project should go ahead lies with the Ministry of Transport (MOT).
Aucklanders may remember policy experts at MOT being doubters about the need for an early start on CRL, believing the case had not been made by Auckland for the project to get cracking.
NZTA chair Sir Brian Roche has acknowledged the agency 'dropped the ball', early in the piece.
There is concern at the higher levels of Auckland Council about Wellington deciding which of two quite different proposals should go ahead.
Will the Government be swayed by the finance package that works best for its accounts? Will it favour the one involving it's own superannuation fund, even if the merits from a transport and urban development perspective lie with the AT/NZTA project?
February 2020 is when the favoured project is expected to be identified, and only then will any real discussion with Auckland be able to begin.
The purpose of merging Auckland's eight local bodies into Auckland Council in 2010 was to give it the scale and expertise to make big decisions critical to its destiny.
The Council showed itself up to the task with the successful commencement of City Rail Link, a project that had to overcome initial hostility from the National-led government of the day.
The Government has decided that it knows better on the light rail front, despite taking over the project with little expertise or experience in the area.
So far, the experience for Auckland does not look good, and looking good in Auckland is something any government would want in general election year 2020.
Similarly, Auckland needs to assert the sovereignty granted to it under amalgamation, a process that began under the Helen Clark-led Labour Government.
It would be ironic if after all this, Auckland did not get the light rail project that it needs.
Like an air disaster, with hindsight there are the 'what ifs.'
What if the Government had left the project with Auckland Transport which had the expertise, momentum and deeper knowledge of Auckland, within its walls?
Would work be underway now, would the cost not be continuing to escalate as the years tick by, would the environmental benefits from replacing the convoy of diesel buses on Dominion Road not flow earlier?
Would the claimed benefits of the NZ Infra model really outweigh the downsides of a later, possibly more complicated path of development that once underway might have little direct public accountability?
If the Government does not give Auckland adequate input into deciding which scheme will work best for Aucklanders, and doesn't come up with plans that justify a delay running into years, then light rail could become a bungle to out-do its affordable housing scheme Kiwibuild.