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'No one wants this': Locals vow to keep fighting tolls on new Manawatū Gorge road (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 1 month ago by Dave to c/politics

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Submissions on tolling the replacement gorge road have now closed, but Woodville residents are refusing to give up fighting.

Under the current proposal, those driving between Palmerston North and Woodville in a light vehicle could pay $4.30 per trip, $8.60 for a return - and up to $17.20 for heavy vehicles.

The former State Highway 3 through the Manawatū Gorge closed in 2017 due to rockfall.

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[–] Dave 1 points 1 month ago

I'm not aware of an NZ example of a private company doing the full thing, but in the wider text I took my quote from they talk about trying to follow a Singapore model.

The government has to be involved somewhere, firstly because they are the only ones that can take the land (and most projects would be unfeasible if they couldn't do that), and secondly because the roads need to connect up to the state owned roads. Plus I guess resource consent and approval type stuff.

Other than that, I don't see why a private company couldn't do it, if it was worth it economically. Which brings me to your point: is it worth it?

I would guess that it's very difficult to find a route that is valuable enough to users that they can charge a decent toll and people will pay it instead of going around, but also that has a high volume of traffic. Ultimately, we probably don't have many (or any) such routes because these would be the first place that the government owned roads are built.

What was that toll road north of Auckland with the big tunnel, one of the first ones? I wonder if there is data to show the cost of building it vs the revenue gained over the first 10 years or so.