Most of it will be design costs and early land purchases. Design is about 10-20% of construction costs which on a multi-billion dollar project adds up pretty quickly.

[–] Dave 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was thinking the land must be super expensive. But then if they have only spend $250M, maybe they haven't bought that much? But I wonder what the new government assets look like compared to that invoice.

[–] terraborra 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They bought the kiwi bacon building on new north road which on its own was $33m. Not sure what other parcels they purchased but none of the corridor is what I would call cheap.

[–] Dave 4 points 9 months ago

The government has good reason to talk up the price of the project to date, but if they sell the land bought then there's a good chance of recouping a lot of that $250 million. Depending on the timing of buying the land, they might get more than $250 million for selling it 😆

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 3 points 9 months ago

Yeah, its not like it was 250m of cash spend that's now gone. At least some of that would have been asset purchases, mostly land / buildings, and going through Auckland that would have cost a bunch.

Of course much easier to oppose it on the grounds of its all money completely lost, rather than assets that could be sold to recoup a bunch of that money.

[–] Xcf456 6 points 9 months ago

It was a huge project, and they arent linear. The spend isn't exactly proportional to the length of track.

That said, some of those costs definitely seem to be to route alterations and the decision to underground big parts of it to placate car drivers. They should've just got on with the original surface level plans and a new govt would've been faced with it partially built and would've made it far harder to just cancel.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

"Embezzlement."

Not that you're gonna see this.