Duelling Brynderwyns priorities as election looms

What to do about the Brynderwyn Hills roading challenges may become a political football, as the two major parties put up competing transport proposals and pledges ahead of the general election.

In its $24.8 billion transport package unveiled at the end of July, National identified the need for a new road bypassing the Brynderwyns as one of four priorities for funding already allocated in the 2023 Budget to the National Resilience Fund – a total of $6 billion over 10 years, to enhance long-term resilience in flood-affected regions.

The document noted intermittent closures of that stretch of State Highway 1 – including a flooding-induced closure in early February that lasted 83 days – and said that a bypass should be a priority to improve efficiency and resilience, supporting economic growth.

“This route is vital for communities and freight, connecting Whangārei and Auckland,” it said.
In a written response to a parliamentary question from National’s transport spokesperson, Simeon Brown, shortly after the February closure, then-Transport Minister Michael Wood said a 2018 Waka Kotahi business case for the Whangarei to Auckland corridor identified a long-term investment programme that included identifying and route-protecting a Brynderwyn bypass road.

Wood said further that a business case for the corridor between Port Marsden Highway and Te Hana, “including the long-term solution of bypassing the Brynderwyn Hills”, would be considered for inclusion in Waka Kotahi’s 2024-2027 national land transport programme.

Labour has yet to unveil its transport policy, but on the same day as National’s Transport for the Future document was released, Woods’ successor David Parker and Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced $567 million in funding to Waka Kotahi for “immediate” remedial work on flood-affected highways in several parts of the country, including $14 million for work on SH1 through the Brynderwyns.

Their statement said the funding would come from the $6 billion National Resilience Plan announced in May’s Budget.

Work on that stretch of road would include over-slip clearing and stabilisation, tree removal, rockfall and slip protection (walls and mesh), under-slip repairs, retaining wall building and repair, river and road edge scour repairs and rockfill, drainage clearing due to silt inundation, drainage repair and replacement, secondary flow-path repair and installation, pavement and seal repairs and replacement, silt and slash removal, and guard rail and barrier replacement.

Roads of national significance

The National Party’s document outlines plans to build 12 more “roads of national significance”, and its Brynderwyns bypass proposal forms part of a broader long-term vision of four-lane highways linking the major cities of the upper North Island, from Whangārei to Tauranga.

The first four stages of the plan include the building of a 26km four-lane expressway from Te Hana, north of Wellsford, to the newly-opened Puhoi to Warkworth SH1 motorway.

“This will see a continuous four-lane state highway with separation between traffic travelling in opposite directions,” the document states. “It will include wide lanes and sealed shoulders and will provide safe roadsides clear of obstacles.”

Benefits of the plan, National says, include improved resilience through a reliable alternative route between Warkworth and Wellsford, and an approximately seven-minute reduction in travel time for the 11,300 vehicles travelling between Warkworth and Wellsford each day.

It will also remove the need for vehicles to travel through the Dome Valley, “a dangerous and unreliable stretch of road which is often closed due to landslides and slippages”.

National says the project is expected to begin in four to10 years’ time, and to cost $2.2 billion – the most expensive of the four stages outlined for its Whangārei to Tauranga four-lane proposal. The other three are the Whangārei to Port Marsden highway ($1.3 billion), Cambridge to Piarere expressway ($721 million) and the Tauriko West SH 29 in western Tauranga ($1.9 billion).

Parker immediately called Nationals’ numbers into question, saying they were outdated and didn’t take into account hikes in road building costs in the past two years. He said National’s $2.2 billion estimate for the Warkworth to Wellsford expressway was as much as $1.8 billion below that of the latest Waka Kotahi estimate of $3.5-$4 billion.

The National document did include in its costing summary a $1.4 billion contingency for any overruns in costs.