- By Simeon Brown, MP for Pakuranga
Two weeks ago Treasury released documents showing Labour’s light rail commitment could cost up to $29 billion, nearly double the $15b price tag that was announced earlier this year.
$15b was already far too much for what is essentially a vanity project for the Government, as light rail on this scale is simply not the answer to Auckland’s traffic woes.
Already around $50 million has been spent on this project on consultants and that is before any actual work has been done on the project.
If the Government does go ahead with this project, the $29b price tag will come at a cost of approximately $16,000 per household across New Zealand.
This would equate to about $1.2bn per kilometre of light rail track or about $1.2m per metre of track. You could purchase about 29,000 houses, or 392,000 Tesla Model 3 cars for the same amount of money the Government is looking to spend on this project.
This is not the only area where the Government is wasting your money on its transport vanity.
This follows on from the more than $50m they wasted on their cycle bridge plans before they were scrapped (plus the several million they continue to spend exploring alternatives) and the $35m spent on consultant fees for the Let’s Get Wellington Moving initiative, when only $250,000 has actually been spent on construction for that project.
The Government’s transport agenda has quickly become one of wasting money on things that they never actually deliver and were bad ideas to begin with.
New Zealand needs a Government which is focussed on results and delivery, not reports and vanity projects. My focus as the National Party Transport Spokesperson will be to focus on the delivery of projects which actually make a difference for New Zealanders and get New Zealanders moving quickly and safely around our cities and our country.
