Just a moment...
www.greaterauckland.org.nz

(everyone knows roading budgets usually blow out - the total final cost of Transmission Gully appears to be $2.5bn – double the projected cost of $1.25bn).

  • Dave@lemmy.nzM
    7·
    19 days ago

    How many years of free public transport would $22B buy?

    I recall the 50% price cut during COVID (for the whole country) cost the government a few hundred million for a year. This was during COVID so it didn’t get higher uptake, but let’s assume there was a higher uptake and make it $500M for 50% off per year, or 1B for free public transport per year.

    We could have free public transport for everyone for 22 years for the price of this one road.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      9·
      19 days ago

      In the article they came up with a few other things 22B would buy:

      • four City Rail Links ($5.5b)
      • seven fully equipped Dunedin hospitals ($3b)
      • seven Cook Strait ferry terminals ($3b)
      • 99 contract-cancellations for no Cook Strait Ferries ($222m)
      • fully funded 7kwh solar panel and battery systems for all 700,000 dwellings in Auckland and Northland ($21b)
      • 169 times the annual walking and cycling budget in the 2024 GPS ($130m)
      • Enough funding to run the Te Huia train between Auckland and Hamilton for 3780 years…
      • … or, how about free passenger rail across the whole country for effectively forever?
      • four and a half Northwest Busways ($5b)
      • seven Airport to Botany Busways ($3b)
      • 22 twice-built International Convention Centres ($1b)
      • Dave@lemmy.nzM
        2·
        15 days ago

        We really need a better way of managing this risk. I don’t have any suggestions but the blatant bribery is a pretty big problem to democracy.