Welcome to the Midnight Collective Broadsheet 121
Actively
supporting NZ’s endangered wetland birds
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| Overpass Raumati South |
One of the large issues surrounding this expressway project has been the
media firewall around it. Most of the stories appearing in the local
press have been written by the NZTA’s media team, and it was clear from the
response of the WGRC to complaints of pollution (see last post), that even they
didn’t have a clear understanding of the management structure they were trying
to work with.
Issues have begun to surface around the management of this expressway construction
as it nears completion however, and we are going to run through them.
We were surprised to have a frank discussion on site with one of the project managers. He made a number of points, the first concerning the contractor's relationship with the NZTA. He made it clear that the decision-making process lay solely with the contractors and that the NZTA, these are his exact words, ‘just pays the bills.’
This raises the issue of how this National Government monitors and controls large privatised projects of this nature. They are steeped in secrecy. The controversy that led to the sacking of private contractors, SERCO from its contract to manage Mt Eden Prison for example, only came out into the open when video evidence of incompetence was posted on youtube. There appears to be no open public accountability on these projects which involve the expenditure of large amounts of taxpayer’s money.
He then raised concern in two more areas. The project’s contractors were employing young, inexperienced engineers some of whom, he noted with exasperation, ‘had trouble getting to work each day’. It seems reasonable to assume that this employment strategy is designed to keep salary costs to a minimum. But is it putting the construction decision-making at risk?
In a second point he expressed his concern regarding the design of the off and on ramp access from the Expressway into Kapiti Road. There was no way he said, that it was going to cope with the amount of traffic (including trucks) that would now be funneled into and out of the centre of Paraparaumu, once the expressway opens. He isn’t the only one to have raised this issue. Mayoral candidate Angela Buswell has also publicised her skepticism oon this issue while a number of recent local letters to the editor, have expressed the same concern. Here are some on site fotos to illustrate the problem.
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| Kapiti Rd approaching E/way overbridge |
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| On ramp south - Will this handle 10,000 a day, including articulated trucks |
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| Off ramp from south - Same question... |
Where
we don’t have any information about the construction, the only thing left is to
speculate, and here warning bells are raised over the case of the missing
roundabout. The bridge at the southern end of the expressway was initially
designed to have two roundabouts funneling traffic into Poplar Ave, and then
south from it. This was in the design ok’d by the Board of Inquiry. So where is the second roundabout?
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| Now you see it (green circle right) |
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| Now you don't... |
Who made the decision to drop it
from the design? On what basis was the decision made? How will traffic flow be affected if this becomes a major
point of departure for traffic attempting to avoid a jammed up Kapiti Road?
Then more seriously, if it has happened here has it happened elsewhere on the expressway?
A
point of concern raised at the Board of Inquiry and not satisfactorily dealt
with there, was how the Expressway contractors were going to manage this
construction through a major swamp. The NZTA’s preferred solution was to dig it
out and lay a firm (sand) base to the road. It was here at the southern end
that this strategy was first implemented, and then abandoned. We kept a watch
on this as the foundations were laid and the swamp appeared too deep and kept
filling with water.
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| Beginnings of Poplar Ave bridge excavation. February 2014 |
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| Bogged in - and this was in the middle of summer February 2014 |
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| Same site today |
Presumably it was here that this ideal was abandoned. Time
and financial constraint must have come into their decision making.
The
question raised is this. How much of this expressway has been laid upon a
swampy base. What are the long term structural implications of this? At the
Board of Inquiry it was stated that the new expressway would be left to
settle for six months before it would be opened for traffic. Has this protocol been
observed? The E/way is now six months ahead of schedule. Does this provide the reason? If so what are the long term implications of this decision-making?
As
a final note – the airing of these issues on this blog has generated quite a lot of local traffic
so it appears we aren’t the only ones concerned and troubled by the issues we
are raising.
Track
we were playing while posting this – there’s lots of concern starting to build
now about the long term welfare of our Democracy, especially as the corporate
body politic, tightens its grip around the world, around us. (It's past time Apple and all their co-offenders, as one example, started paying the same tax we do - though this is just one of issue among many). So today we are running with Oscar Brand and Free and Fair Elections… Susie is right behind this one.
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