I love this. Saw it on the news last night. The proposal is likely to cost twice as much as they say because they took the cost from the original proposal and didn’t update them.
However, the brilliant part of promising to spend money on roads, funding it from the National Land Transport Fund, is that you don’t have to raise taxes. If you take the money from the NLTF, you take money away from other roading projects instead.
So the proposal is basically to not build or repair other roads, and instead spend the money on these projects. It looks like a great election promise (to certain voter bases) but it’s all smoke and mirrors.
You’re forgetting that modern conservative political parties have no platform that actually addresses the needs of our time. As a larger percentage of voters become downtrodden, value signalling and virtue signalling is no longer enough to secure victory for the business owners and 1%ers. They need to add “boots on the ground” initiatives to get the votes. The old favourites are highways and tough-on-crime. They’re essentially returning to the empty pantry over and over looking for something to eat. A four laner from Wh. To Tau. would take 8 years just to sort out land rights. This is just National throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. The NLTF as it is can barely support road required maintenance and renewal. I suspect the National supporters who like this plan are the same people that complain about potholes.
Absolutely. Add to that some of the interviews saying there isn’t that much traffic on these roads anyway, and that induced demand is a real thing, you have a transport policy which will add nothing to the economy of NZ except for the contractors.
I love this. Saw it on the news last night. The proposal is likely to cost twice as much as they say because they took the cost from the original proposal and didn’t update them.
However, the brilliant part of promising to spend money on roads, funding it from the National Land Transport Fund, is that you don’t have to raise taxes. If you take the money from the NLTF, you take money away from other roading projects instead.
So the proposal is basically to not build or repair other roads, and instead spend the money on these projects. It looks like a great election promise (to certain voter bases) but it’s all smoke and mirrors.
You’re forgetting that modern conservative political parties have no platform that actually addresses the needs of our time. As a larger percentage of voters become downtrodden, value signalling and virtue signalling is no longer enough to secure victory for the business owners and 1%ers. They need to add “boots on the ground” initiatives to get the votes. The old favourites are highways and tough-on-crime. They’re essentially returning to the empty pantry over and over looking for something to eat. A four laner from Wh. To Tau. would take 8 years just to sort out land rights. This is just National throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. The NLTF as it is can barely support road required maintenance and renewal. I suspect the National supporters who like this plan are the same people that complain about potholes.
Exactly this. We cannot maintain the routes we have, never mind building more. They didn’t even cost it properly.
Absolutely. Add to that some of the interviews saying there isn’t that much traffic on these roads anyway, and that induced demand is a real thing, you have a transport policy which will add nothing to the economy of NZ except for the contractors.
Well even the contracters won’t be new, they will jist be taken off the other projects that lose funding from this.