FEATURE

8 e.nz March/April 2001

 FEATURE

WHY YOU ARE WAITING

Every morning and evening the two-lane bridge over the Pauatahanui Inlet at Paremata backs up traffic for
thousands of Wellington commuters driving to and from the Kapiti coast. The frustration levels over the 25
kilometres of road between Paekakariki and Paremata have boiled over and led the capital’s evening paper,
The Evening Post, to begin a “WHY ARE WE WAITING?” bumper sticker campaign for a hugely expensive new
road along a 27 kilometre, rollercoaster-like route called Transmission Gully. But Transit New Zealand’s cost
benefit ratios don’t envisage this route being built until 2011. PETER KING looks at the engineering needed for
the route and the implications of Wellington Regional Council’s politicking to jump Transfund’s queues.

Image courtesy Terralink Ltd March/April 2001 e.nz 9

 FEATURE

SOMETIME AROUND 2015, tourist buses reaching McKays Crossing, Funding

by the entrance to the Queen Elizabeth II Park north of Wellington, It is impossible to talk about Transmission Gully without talking about
will have a choice of two routes to head south into the capital. There the way roading projects are funded in New Zealand, for it is entirely
will be the existing coastal route alongside the main trunk line which possible that the pressure to accommodate the demand for Trans-
will provide views of Kapiti Island; or the Transmission Gully route mission Gully will lead Parliament to agree to changes in the system
which will involve a slow climb up an extremely steep road followed which were once considered quite radical.
by a fast run down a deep valley, followed by another steep climb “It’s an icon of road pricing. People will happily vote “yes, yes,” for
before running downhill to rejoin State Highway One (SH1) south of something that they want here and now, not realising that it will
Porirua. inevitably open the way for new forms of road funding. There’s no
For most tourist operators the choice will be a simple one. With its doubt in my mind that the flexibility we are seeking from Parliament
magnificent sunsets and the view of historic Kapiti Island the coast to allow us to fund Transmission Gully could be the thin end of the
will attract most tourists. But if our hypothetical tourists are a busload wedge for a whole new form of road pricing which will need careful
of visiting engineers, the Transmission Gully route will be far more consideration,” says Wellington Regional Council transportation
fascinating because it will trace one of the most technically difficult committee chairman, Terry McDavitt.
and politically pivotal roading projects ever undertaken in New Not everyone agrees about that. Tauranga has toll roads for its busy
Zealand. port, built under very specific legislation. However, governments are
The Transmission Gully route has been talked about since the not very keen on patchy legislation and there is an inevitable logic
1940s. There is an apocryphal story that the US Army offered to build that, if people support the idea of a toll road for Transmission Gully,
it during World War Two, but it is questionable whether they were it does open the door to the possibility of paying for road usage direct-
contemplating more than a jeep track and there are certainly no ly. So, some believe this one issue could lead to a legislative slippery
written records of the offer. This did not
prevent the good citizens of Paremata
pointing to this alternative route when the
Ministry of Works first began public
consultation on widening SH1 through
their suburb back in 1981. But the first
serious look at the route was undertaken
in 1988 as part of the Greater Wellington
Area Land Use and Transport Strategic
Review (GATS) commissioned by the
Wellington Regional Council. The initial
alignment work was carried out in 1988 by
Murray Carpenter of Opus International
Consultants using manual techniques
from photogrammetry derived contour
plans.
The GATS study, which was audited by
the Parliamentary Commissioner for the
Environment, essentially concurred that
the Transmission Gully route was the
better location for a future SH1 and
recommended that Transit should obtain The narrow Paekakariki to Pukerua Bay road scares drivers
designations on the land required for the but has a lower than average accident rate.
route. Transit accepted this recommenda-
tion acknowledging that eventually the road would need to be built slope to more user pays roading throughout the whole country.
but, despite looking at various funding options, it could find no legal Core to New Zealand’s state funded system of roading construc-
way to spend $220 million on the approximately 25,000 drivers who tion are Transfund Benefit Cost Ratios (BCR). The system has been
use the existing road every day, any time before about 2011. Transit designed to be impervious to local “pothole politics”, so that resources
has now adopted the strategy that it will anticipate the construction are allocated strictly according to a predictable formula applied
of the route by doing all necessary preparatory work in case alternative uniformly nationwide.
funding becomes available. The problem is that that funding may Benefits are counted primarily in terms of safety (the potential to
not become available anytime soon and, in the meantime, the public save life), travel time, and vehicle operating costs. Projects with a
of Wellington are displaying the Evening Post’s “WHY ARE WE BCR of 4 automatically qualify for Transfund funding. But because
WAITING” bumper stickers in droves, creating a political head of Transmission Gully is an alternative route to Wellington, not the sole
steam in the capital that any enterprising politician may tap at will. route, the total amount of traffic is unlikely to be more than half the

10 e.nz March/April 2001


current level of traffic (ie. 12,000 vpd) which, combined with its huge
cost, only generates a BCR of 2.3. In short, under traditional funding
criteria, Transmission Gully does not stack up and probably won’t for
nearly a decade.
While Transfund is reviewing its benefits pricing system it is
unlikely that any changes will magically push Transmission Gully over
the threshold. Transfund policy and strategy manager, Andrew Body,
says early consultation has suggested that matters such as travel
time, reliability, and feelings of safety and security might be given
more consideration when calculating benefits. But exactly what is
recommended to Transfund’s board in November this year is
obviously far from clear at this stage.
“horror highway”?
But didn’t I read somewhere that the old SH1 along this stretch is a
“horror highway” – scene of many terrible accidents? Land Transport
Safety Authority Wellington Regional Manager, Demetra Kennedy,
doesn’t think so.
“I think it’s unfortunate it has been given that name. Yes, there
have been accidents and there were the two crashes late last year
where altogether five people died, and it certainly is a challenging
and unforgiving segment of highway for
drivers. But the number of crashes and fatali-
ties on that highway against the level of traffic ...it is entirely possible that the pressure to accommodate the
don’t compare with the worst roads in New demand for Transmission Gully will lead Parliament to agree to
Zealand. I don’t think it warrants the term ‘killer changes in the system which were once considered quite radical.
highway’, ” she says.
Transit New Zealand Wellington Regional
Highway Manager, Dave Rendall, says that the narrow two-lane
stretch from Paekakariki to Pukerua Bay actually has a better safety
record than the national average (~75%). Although, he says, when
an accident does happen it tends to be more severe because there is
nowhere for drivers to escape collision, and the consequences of the
accident inevitably means blocking SH1, leading to delays and
frustration. By contrast, the more dangerous Pukerua Bay to
Plimmerton section is currently being realigned under normal BCR
criteria.
It’s perhaps a case of not letting a good headline get in the way of
the facts. It is easy to be upset about individual fatal accidents but a
few high profile stories can cloud the tragedies hidden behind
Traffic routinely backs up at the roundabout
before the Paremata bridge.
FEATURE
Transit’s dull story of national statistics. People do not spend much
time reading their newspaper and rarely get much further than a
headline. They are upset by dramatic deaths and form a world view
based on such snippets of information rather than any coherent pat-
tern in the data. The impression the Evening Post’s “WHY ARE WE
WAITING” campaign gives is that were it not for Transit bureaucrats
it would be possible to start building the Transmission Gully route
tomorrow. This is simply not the case ,as Cr McDavitt explains.
“The problem with the Evening Post campaign is that it makes it
seem that Transmission Gully is imminent when it simply isn’t.
Transmission Gully was only ever going to be stage two. We’re only
just starting stage one – although that should have started five years
ago – and that’s going to take five years, so we won’t even begin to see
stage two until 2005,6 or 7. Probably seven.”
Stage one is the replacement of the narrow Paremata bridge and
the four-laning of much of the Paremata to Pukerua Bay road. Mr
Rendall says, all things going well in the Environment Court, it will be
possible to start working on replacing the Paremata bridge by the
end of 2001. That will, for the most part, relieve most of the current
congestion and push the bottleneck back to Pukerua Bay.
“Some people object that by four-laning the road to Pukerua Bay
we will just be moving the congestion point, but they overlook the
simple fact that that is all we ever do,” Mr Rendall says. “As soon as
you solve a problem in one place you inevitably get one somewhere
else.” Given that SH1 will be four-laned all the way to Pukerua Bay by
2003 anyway, one can only ask why all the hoopla about Transmission
Gully? Why not simply four-lane the highway all the way to McKays
Crossing?
Pukerua Bay
The place where the technical solutions push-cart meets the political
juggernaut coming the other way is Pukerua Bay. The little township
isn’t the problem. There are plans to bypass it altogether, which would
March/April 2001 e.nz 11
 FEATURE

probably please both residents and drivers. The problem is the road
between Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki. This two-lane section of SH1
hugs the north-south coastline with a seawall to the west and the
main trunk line, which threads through tunnels in the steep hillside,
to the east. Technically there are some issues about widening the
road out over the sea to four lanes but these are not insoluble. The
insurmountable problem is political.
“There is no way you would ever get a resource consent,” says
Councillor McDavitt. This inevitably means that the Paekakariki to
Pukerua Bay will only ever be two lanes wide at its narrowest points
which, with 20,000 to 25,000 vehicles passing through per day, creates
considerable problems.

Cost gap
Blocked on the coastal route by the Resource Management Act and
by a low BCR on the Transmission Gully route, the Regional Council
is looking for alternative funding methods ranging from tolls through
to special rates to fund the gap between what the State coffers could
provide and what it needs to build the road. The size of that gap is
anywhere between nothing and $100 million which is almost half the
value of the project. “It’s the issue that follows me around every
waking moment,” Councillor McDavitt claims.
The problem is, despite recent reports from PriceWaterhouse-
Coopers and Sinclair Knight Merz which have effectively concurred
with past findings, nobody knows exactly what that cost gap is and a

The original GATS alignment had suggested that there

would be a need for cuts in the unstable greywacke
hillside, over 100 metres high. Stabilising these to
prevent slips would be difficult enough without an
active faultline running through the middle of it.

large part of the reason for that is nobody knows exactly what the cost
will be. The answer to that question lies, quite literally, in the soil.
Beca Carter Hollings & Ferner has been using the MOSS highway
design program to refine the original GATS alignments in order to
finalise the designation for the land. In the process it has developed
some options which could have considerable bearing on the final
design and costs. Graham Ramsay has been leading the Beca team
and pays tribute to the original 1988 work.

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12 e.nz March/April 2001

 FEATURE

“We were very impressed by the manual work done by the original GATS team. In
many respects the MOSS system confirmed the alignment selected in 1988.
However, that alignment involved cuts of a height now considered not able to be
too reliably and securely achieved, and even with the computer techniques
available today Beca could not find an alignment which avoided cuts of those
heights.”
But there were troubling matters that the Beca team became concerned about.
The principal problem is the Wainui Saddle. From the north the land rises 262
metres in just three kilometres creating a road which, with a grade of between 7.5
and 8.2 percent, will be as steep as Wellington’s notorious Ngauranga Gorge but
three times as long.
Just for fun, like the Ngauranga Gorge, the Wainui Saddle is the result of an
active faultline – the Ohariu Fault – the centre of which will run within metres of
the proposed highway. Unlike Ngauranga Gorge the Ohariu fault runs right down

Another notable feature of the design is a requirement for a 90

metre high viaduct over Cannons Creek to span a 290 metre
divide. The viaduct will be similar in scale to the Otira
Viaduct opened in Otira Gorge in 1999.

the middle of the proposed route. The original GATS alignment had suggested
that there would be a need for cuts in the unstable greywacke hillside, over 100
metres high. Stabilising these to prevent slips would be difficult enough without
an active faultline running through the middle of it.
To avoid the high cuts the Beca team looked at putting the up and down lanes
on opposite sides of the valley or placing them at different levels on the same side
of the valley. While these reduced the amount of material to be removed the cuts
remained stubbornly at about 90 m high which was still considered too big given
the local geology. Finally, they concluded the best way to build a highway that
could survive any fault movement would be to build 1.5 km of four-lane viaduct
up the middle of the valley. This would marginally increase the gradient but
reduce the total cut and fill quantities for the job to 5.1 and 5.4 million cubic metres,
and the cut depth to 16 metres at the saddle. It would, however, significantly
increase the price.

Earthworks
The size of the earthworks contemplated for the whole Transmission Gully route
is greater than any other roading project undertaken in New Zealand in the past
decade. To make things interesting any contractor building the road will have to
make special provision to avoid environmental impacts on Pauatahanui Inlet.
The tributaries of this inlet extend directly up into the construction area, and the
potential for huge quantities of silt to flow down into the inlet and disturb an
ecologically valuable wetlands area during construction, is considerable. It is
inevitable that the resource consents for constructing Transmission Gully will
require the contractors to take special care in this regard.
Another notable feature of the design is a requirement for a 90 metre high
viaduct over Cannons Creek to span a 290 metre divide. The viaduct will be similar
in scale to the Otira Viaduct opened in Otira Gorge in 1999. The preferred design
was a four span, eight metre deep, steel truss bridge with the longest span being
105 metres.
Determining exactly how much the road will cost to build will vary, partly on
the nature of the soils and partly on the conditions of the resource consent needed
to construct the road. Mr Ramsay says that the next stage of development

March/April 2001 e.nz 13

 FEATURE
effectively means that Transit may as well start applying for the
resource consent sooner rather than later. This will allow for greater
research into the costs as well as clarifying the level of risk the con-
tractor will face.
Lastly, the design included scope for an optional $20 million toll
collection plaza. The only way this could be accommodated was to
split the northbound and southbound toll booths on either side of
Why, it has been asked, would truckers, in particular,
want to haul their loads up a 262 metre high hill down
the other side to about sea-level and back up another
170 metre high hill and pay for the privilege,...?
SH58 which connects Porirua to the Hutt Valley over Haywards Hill.
The plaza would be designed for 50 percent manual collection, 30
percent token and 20 percent electronic. This may vary depending
on available technology when the road is actually built. Naturally
the toll collection part of the exercise is seen as the most contentious
but seems to be the only realistic option.
Roading tax
Of course the other funding possibility is some form of regional
roading tax, which is where the public support engendered by cam-
paigning newspapers might be thought to make a difference. Such
taxes could be based on rates or an impost on fuel. But willingness to
pay surveys conducted by the Regional Council in 1997-1998 found
that only 20 percent of respondents supported a rating option, while
47 percent supported a regional petrol tax at that time. Councillor
McDavitt says the option of a regional rate to pay for the road has
14 e.nz March/April 2001
This truck weigh
station outside
Plimmerton
occupies the
kind of land
needed for a toll
plaza. But it is
thought
impossible to toll
the existing SH1
route.
been discarded, although cities may consider this option, while the
rapid increase in petrol prices means “we tend to downplay that
option”. So much for public agitation.
If petrol and direct regional taxation is out that returns the question
to tolls, and that means that if Transmission Gully is built early it will
be under enabling legislation that allows for the creation of tolled
roads. But why, it has been asked, would truckers, in particular, want
to haul their loads up a 262 metre high hill down the other side to
about sea-level and back up another 170 metre high hill and pay for
the privilege, when they could take a perfectly flat route around the
coast? Why, in fact, would anyone want to do that?
Cr McDavitt believes local truckers will pay the likely toll price of
$2 determined by its willingness to pay surveys. “Some may disagree
but the local truck operators I have talked to say that time is more
important than anything else. They want a reliable route and they
are prepared to pay for reliability,” he says.
He also sees the potential for toll snobbery. People paying because
they believe they are important enough to justify travelling more
quickly. That is, of course, if the creation of the new route doesn’t
actually make the old route faster. This begs the question, wouldn’t
it be more sensible to toll the existing coastal route?
“I’ve said that at meetings and people just go ‘whaaat’?” Cr
McDavitt says. “But of course it makes more sense to toll the coastal
route. The problem is that there is no precedent for putting a toll on
an existing free state highway to pay for another one and I have to
regard it as politically impossible to sell.”
Or toll both routes. “The AA is dead against that on the ground of
OECD recommendations that all toll routes must have a non-toll
alternative.”
So Transmission Gully will be a toll road. Will anyone pay the toll?
Mr Rendall has the figures based on a survey of 1500 local drivers

Grade profile for Transmission Gully and existing SH1 route.
commissioned by Transit and the WRC. The survey identified the
pros and cons of the new road to the potential users, plus a toll, and
got them to choose how much they thought they would pay. Using
the data gained Transit then looked for an optimal revenue result.
That generated a traffic flow of 8-10,000 vehicles per day with a peak
toll price of $2.50 and an off-peak price of $1.25. The result, however,
still does not shift the uncertainty range from the zero to $100 million
range. “One interesting result of the survey was that drivers were
prepared to pay 75 cents to travel on Transmission Gully, even if there
was no saving over the SH1 route, just for the benefits of a continuous
passing lane and a median barrier,” Mr Rendall says.
He says cross-referencing their study with toll operators in other
parts of the world found that the results were comparable. He says
toll road operators around the world have a general rule of thumb
that you need 25,000 vehicles per day to make a toll road economic.
With projected usage of a third of that, Transmission Gully makes for
a very dubious toll road. And while 75 cents is an interesting readiness
to pay figure it does not necessarily stack up against the costs.
Campaign
So do we have a situation where people are only too keen to be
whipped into a lather by a crusading press and get apoplectic at
public officials, when the fact is nobody in the region is actually
prepared to front up with the cash. They really want to freeload on
the taxpayer but don’t want to admit it.
FEATURE
Naturally the Evening Post doesn’t think so. The paper’s coverage is
long on screaming headlines such as “Horror Highway”, and very
short on sober maths. Deputy Editor Clive Lind believes the paper’s
stand is about saving lives. He says the editors at the Post thought
long and hard before taking their stand.
“Daily news stories we were running about traffic and transport
problems and the effect it was having on the region led us to believe
Deputy Editor Mr Lind says that despite the paper’s
campaign it has applied normal standards of
fairness and accuracy in addressing both those in
favour of and opposed to Transmission Gully.
that a campaign was warranted because those seeking solutions,
notably Wellington Regional Council, were not being heeded,” he
says.
Mr Lind says that despite the paper’s campaign it has applied
normal standards of fairness and accuracy in addressing both those
in favour of and opposed to Transmission Gully.
“We acknowledged at the outset there would be opposing views.
We printed them in stories and treated them with respect, even
meeting one such group for discussions. As well, we published their
letters. But we believed the campaign was justified because the issue
March/April 2001 e.nz 15
 FEATURE
needed to come under close scrutiny. This is best done through a
campaign. They are not new. We ran a similar campaign for a new
regional hospital for Wellington. Newspapers throughout the country
undertake similar work. Objectivity is often hard to define. We believe
we were fair to those who had differing views.”
I asked if many of the paper’s senior staff lived in the area and
were personally affected by the current congestion levels. “Some
senior staff live in the area but I would say all have been affected by
traffic and transport hassles at some stage over the years. I know I
have. Further, senior editors do not make judgments on stories based
on where they live themselves.”
Asked if he thinks the paper is accountable, the answer is yes. “[We
are] always accountable. We pride ourselves on listening to our
readers. In the end, we make the judgments on what to run but
readers are quick to let us know what they think.”
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Based on the available information they get
from their paper, one might add. A tricky
situation.
That does not mean that political players
don’t have not their own ideas about how to
use this fountain of public feeling to advance
their own causes. United Party leader, Peter
Dunne, advanced a private member’s bill to
create a Transmission Gully Commissioner
to oversee the construction of the road. The
Commissioner’s job would be to develop a
plan for the Minister’s approval. The three-
page bill is completely silent as to how that
might be achieved.
Roads reform
Whether a “jobs for the boys” approach to
the problem will solve anything seems
extremely doubtful. The bureaucracy has
wrestled long and hard with the issue of roads reform, and the
Ministry of Transport is consulting on policy replacements for the
National Party’s shelved Better Roads Better Transport proposals.
These are intended for release this year. However, there is no sign of
any ripples yet to indicate that anything will surface from the
bureaucracy any time soon to allow such developments to press
ahead. In many respects the “WHY ARE WE WAITING” campaign
could be equally applied to the policy development of roading reform
which, given the years of uncertainty which have dogged roading,
seems to have practically become a career for the Ministry of Trans-
port. Hopefully, with a little more clarity from this department, we
will all know where we stand this year.
Peter King, editor
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