Posts by Joshua Arbury
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This guy = Steven Joyce
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Let’s say that I run a company which sells two different products: red socks and blue socks, for example. 84% of what I sell are red socks and 16% of what I sell are blue socks. Therefore, 84% of my current machinery is dedicated to making red socks and 16% dedicated to making blue socks.
Now, over the past few years my sales of red socks have been pretty constant, in fact they haven’t increased since 2004. Over that same time period my sales of blue socks have increased significantly – by around 20-30% even. Furthermore, I know that 5-10 years into the future my main ingredient for making red socks is going to increase dramatically in price, and my prices will need to go up significantly to reflect this. Therefore my likely future sales of red socks are going to stay constant or perhaps even decline. As people will still need to buy socks, blue socks will become comparatively cheaper and more popular.
Now, a few questions:
Over the next 5-10 years is it more likely that my sales of blue socks will increase, or my sales of red socks?
Given that my sales of red socks haven’t increased since 2004 and because I’m mindful of future price increases in a very important ingredient, should I build another machine that makes red socks?
Given the recent increase in my sales of blue socks, should I add capacity to the production of them instead?
Would it be wise, in a business sense, for me to focus the vast majority of the money I have to spend on capacity increases on red socks?
In case anyone got lost in the metaphor, private vehicles are red socks, public transport is blue socks. Steven Joyce is proposing to spend the vast majority of transport funds for new infrastructure on roads, even though the number of vehicles using the roads is not increasing. Meanwhile, our “growth sector” of blue socks/public transport is getting ignored and deprived of necessary funds.
Geez I thought this guy was a successful businessman. He sounds like numbskull to me.
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Yes, the "follows existing rail designation is a worry".
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60% underground. Through Alan Wood Reserve. Underneath Great North Road???? Underneath New North Road.
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It could certainly be worse..... a diagram would be nice.
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Having seen the draft bills for the Auckland reconstruction (I'm quoted by proxy in a Greens release this morning about the secondment of existing councils' staff to the Auckland Transitional Agency), I can safely say that no matter how much of a "jobs for the boys" look the MFAT appointment appears to be it's nothing against what will be done for the ATA.
Is it anywhere online yet?
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Yes it is strange that NZTA have somehow 'magically' found three options $300-700 million cheaper than the cheapest option they have previously explored. Very strange indeed.
I've writeen a guest post for "The Standard" on this issue: http://www.thestandard.org.nz/joyce-trashes-mt-albert/
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Most of the "Your Views" are actually quite anti-motorway from my reading. Even National voters from Remuera.
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There were a range of options considered by NZTA over a number of years. You can see the costings for all of them on the last page of this document: http://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Katrina-09/Business-case-for-the-Waterview-Connection.pdf.
The cheapest option considered was a $1.456 billion Open Cut option. By contrast the twin tunnels were $1.89 billion when first costed. Therefore the difference was around $450 million - probably worth the extra money when you consider the social and environmental costs of an Open Cut option.
I still believe that the financing costs were added on for political reasons, as have been (to a lesser extent) the SH16 upgrade costs.
Now I don’t know how NZTA have come up with options with construction costs of between $760 million and $1.16 billion. But as you can’t get something for nothing, an option significantly cheaper than “Open Cut” is likely to be significantly worse. Otherwise, why were those options not considered earlier?
Either NZTA were idiots for 6 years when coming up with the original costing of the options, or there’s something dodgy going on here. I’m picking the latter.
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OK it is official that the gutting of the RMA will be used to speed up the Waterview Connection:
**How does this affect the timeframe for construction of the Waterview Connection?**
Depending on the final scope of the project it could be possible to begin construction in 2011 and complete the project within about four years.
As a Road of National Significance this is expected to be progressed under the call-in process of the new provisions of the Resource Management Act which will significantly speed up delivery of the project.