In hindsight, I think they should have started building rail in the areas where the route etc was straightforward, while planning for the difficult bits was underway.

That way, it will be much harder to cancel a project that is already well underway.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

My city (Liège, Belgium) is slowly coming out of > 5 years of badly planned tram building. Our first, small-ish line started being built before plans were finalized, due to political pressures.

So they kept hitting utilities when digging. They kept running into scheduling issues. And now it's taken over twice as long as it should have, is tens of millions over budget, and has caused numerous bankruptcies in downtown shops. The economic damage to the city from constant city-wide road closures is immeasurable.

We also have like 500 m of metro buried under one of our boulevards (I wanna say from the '90s). We do not have a metro, and never will. It's just a project that was "started" because there was a budget for it, then there wasn't a budget anymore and that was that.

So, please learn from our mistakes and do not start building trams or metros without having a fully planned out route. A half done line is insanely expensive and disruptive but absolutely no use to anyone.

[–] Ilovethebomb 1 points 9 months ago

Tens of millions over budget would be an absolute bargain by our standards.

[–] Dave 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm wondering if they should have planned to build on existing roads. They could have finished the project, then left National with the job of purchasing property to widen roads. It seems buying a 20km stretch of land to build it on would have been more expensive than building the thing, especially considering the skyrocketing Auckland house prices since the project started.

[–] Ilovethebomb 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Build on the surface, with an aim to eventually underground part of the network in the future. That way, any future government would be very unwilling to remove a working service.

Was the plan to demolish a bunch of houses to build the line or something?

[–] Dave 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sure, I'm not that familiar with it so just basing it on what I'd read in the linked article. But it shows maybe 2/3rd above ground, and states it would be separate to roads for cars. I'm not sure how you could do that without buying a bunch of land (admittedly on a second reading not 20km, but over 10KM for the above ground part).

[–] Ilovethebomb 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Isn't the whole advantage of light rail that you can run it along surface streets?

This is reminiscent of the the harbour cycle bridge, just a ridiculous, over the top proposal that was in no way cost effective.

I think really annoys me the number of opportunities the Ardern government missed, both in Auckland and Wellington.

[–] Dave 1 points 9 months ago

I would love NZ to invest in long term infrastructure projects. These proposals seem crazy now in hindsight, but I feel it's only because to truely do something like this you probably need support across the aisle.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that they should have done what someone else suggested, lay rail over existing roads then move sections underground over time.

[–] themusicman@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

The harbour cycle bridge is justifiable if they also spent the same amount again on a network for the rest of Auckland.