Tag: Northland

So Winston Did It. We Should Not Be Afraid of Pounding that Iron

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Where next

While you can say Winston Peters winning Northland over the weekend was pretty much not in doubt but rather the margin he did it by, the question is where next for Northland itself.

Northland is not very well despite an abundant of renewable resources (timber, fishing, farming) and tourism while sitting right above the country’s biggest city – Auckland.

I caught this blog post over the weekend describing the Northland situation:

Northland speaks and National still isn’t listening.

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

Steven Joyce was interviewed on Q & A about the heavy loss National had experienced in the Northland bye-election. He was challenged by Corin Dann regarding the Government’s neglect of the regions. Joyce was adamant that Northland was unique and what it really needed was improved infrastructure such as roads and broadband. Joyce has a narrow, blinkered view of the world that is informed by his corporate bias and passion for roads and sadly the election defeat didn’t remove his blinkers or open his eyes.

I spent a few days near Kaitaia a couple of years ago (while attending an education conference) and was able to tour the area and listen to people at the forefront of education, health and welfare. Poverty can be seen everywhere in Northland, it is evident in the housing, the health statistics and stories from local doctors like Lance O’Sullivan.

Schools struggle to meet the diverse needs of the mainly Maori communities and while there seems to be ample money to support elite private schools, Northland schools getignored and bullied instead. Many of the successes in education in the region are due to communities doing what they can despite the Government. Kerikeri High School has lifted Maori achievement by supporting a successful programme that has had its funding cut. Much special education support, under the current system, is not directed to where there is greatest need and the likes of Kings College have greater access to services instead.

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Full post here: http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/northland-speaks-and-national-still.html?spref=fb

I shared the post on Facebook with this short commentary added to it:

Timber you say?
Just imagine what would happen to that Timber Industry fuelling that Northland Economy if they had a decent rail connection from Northland to a massive consumer and industrial machine called Auckland?

You know bringing the North Auckland Line up to first world standards while building the Marsden Point Line to the Marsden Deep Water Port to allow exports of that Northland Timber too

But no National still seem contempt on a Holiday Highway that will never reach Northland whether it be Wellsford or Warkworth.

And that folks is just a reason of a few that National just faced a 25% swing and thus what the Aussies called a thumping,

[Edit: addition – granted that rail is not the silver bullet but it goes some distance in connecting industry, logistics, and population centres up.]

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You would think after National suffered the 25% swing and other electorates starting to get ideas they would listen. Well if this was anything to go by (and I do not doubt the source) then listening is not happening:

: Key says the cricket hurt less than the Northland by-election because the cricketers never gave up Think about that for a moment

: no regard at all for the man who was assigned an impossible task, made to humiliate himself, then abandoned by the leadership

As for Labour I have already Tweeted to Andrew Little for the need of an Auckland/Northland Plan to get both interlinked regions going. He liked the idea but it will be a case of Labour listening and actioning the plan or not – like National.

Holiday Highway in the Spotlight

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Hearings Begin on Warkworth Section of Holiday Highway

 

The Herald has noted that the Board of Enquiry gets under way today for the Puhoi-Warkworth section of the Puhoi-Welsford Roads of National Significance Program otherwise known as the Holiday Highway.

From the NZ Herald:

Holiday highway plan in spotlight

By Mathew Dearnaley 4:15 AM Monday Apr 7, 2014

Fast-tracking of $760m extension to be considered over 14 days. 

Plans for one of the country’s most expensive transport projects – a $760 million extension of Auckland’s motorway network to Warkworth – go under the microscope today.

A board of inquiry appointed for fast-tracking planning consideration of the 18.5km extension as the first half of a Road of National Significance will preside over 14 days of hearings.

The Government is promoting the extension over 12 viaducts and bridges from the Johnstones Hill traffic tunnels south of Puhoi to a new roundabout north of Warkworth, as a vital freight and tourism link with Northland.

Even so, many of the 14,000 vehicles a day expected to use the new road by 2026 will double back to Warkworth’s often bottlenecked Hill St turnoff to eastern beaches.

That keeps critics such as Auckland Council infrastructure chairman Mike Lee calling it “the holiday highway” to the intense annoyance of Northland leaders and former Rodney mayor Penny Webster.

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There will only be one traffic interchange between Orewa and Warkworth, to be confined to just south-facing ramps at Puhoi, after residents protested against an earlier plan which would have denied them access.

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So you will need to double back and still get held up at the notorious Hill Road intersection at Warkworth in order to get to the eastern beaches. That in itself is rather self-defeating.

 

In any case the Holiday Highway even if fully completed as the gold-plated 4-lane motorway would still fall well short of where it would need to be if it were to serve the population and industrial centres of Northland. You would need to take the motorway all the way to Whangarei itself to get the “benefits” you would be sort after – much like the 4-lane expressway Auckland to Hamilton and Cambridge.

Ironically there has been two more cheaper but more beneficial transport schemes to connect Auckland up to Northland than the Holiday Highway. One is Operation Lifesaver devised by Transport Blog, the other is to fully upgrade the North Auckland (rail) Line from Swanson to Whangarei with a branch line to Marsden Point (home of a deep water port and our oil refinery) to allow our more powerful DL’s to haul longer trains from the area south (like logs).

You can read about Operation Lifesaver as an alternative to the Holiday Highway HERE.

 

Operation Lifesaver I believe follows the same premise as the upgrades to State Highway 2 that have happened and are going to continue to happen again soon. You can read what NZTA has done and what it will be up to with State Highway 2 here: Safety Improvements for State Highway 2. Once the upgrades are complete that section of State Highway 2 (which carries more regular, holiday and freight traffic than the Holiday Highway ever would) will allow that traffic to travel efficiently and safely to their destinations. So if these kind of simple upgrades to a much busier State Highway 2 are effective why does State Highway 1 going north need to be a 4-lane Motorway that does not really go the distance it would need to? And these upgrades to State Highway 2 are very similar to what Operation Lifesaver proposes.

 

Lets hope this Board of Inquiry puts the Holiday Highway under the same intense microscope as it did to a Wellington Highway project last month. And cross fingers the Board of Inquiry might start shifting us away from this motorway to something more viable that will not break the bank…

Here’s hoping