Andrew Dickens: The politicisation of city designs is why nothing ever happens anymore

Andrew Dickens Afternoons

So I went to a party at the weekend. Quite a swanky one. Negronis and burgers and all sorts of people. Judges and doctors and advertising people and even musicians.

An old mate was there, a card-carrying lefty.

We're chatting and he says he's part of an urbanism group. Studying and advocating for urban development, and he says, "you right-wing ZB types would hate it."

So I said, "I beg your pardon?"

What part of having a well-designed and functional city is either left-wing or right-wing? It's not about politics it's about practicality. Who doesn't want a functioning public transport system? Who doesn't want accommodation solutions for the poor and the young so they don't have to leave the cities for a house? By the way right-wingers love trains. Mussolini made them run on time.

The politicisation of city designs is why nothing ever happens anymore and our cities just get worse and worse.

So it was good to open the paper on Sunday and see the Auckland mayor talking about that city's abortive light rail plans.

He said it was good that the Government killed Labour's plan off because it was disastrously handled.

The main problem with it was the cost which had been calculated at 400 million dollars a kilometre. Mayor Brown said he was recently in a town in France, the size of Christchurch, who have built a very successful light rail, at a cost of 50 million a kilometre. Nearly 90 per cent cheaper?

Then he went into all the reasons big projects cost so much in New Zealand. The gold plating of design, the contracts granted to constructors who are also suppliers who have no reason to contain costs, and then there's the politics. What idiot wanted to put a light rail into a tunnel? Michael Wood, that's who.

But the problem with all of this is that a good idea is thrown away because of bad management.

When Labour came in in 2017, AT had a 6 billion dollar light rail plan, ready to go. But Labour and then the New Zealand Superannuation Fund thought they could do it better and suddenly it was 15 billion because of the tunnelling and it stalled and then National killed it.

Much was made of the 228 million spent with no track laid which shows us how little people know of projects. That money was spent on geo-tech reports and surveys and buying land and planning. It's still all valid now and to throw it out is a blatant waste of taxpayers' money.

Light rail is not left wing. Light rail is not a bad idea. Labour was just a bad government that cocked it up.

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