Scoping study into prioritising strategic transport links in Northland

Abstract

Northland is presently undertaking a review of its Regional Land Transport Strategy (RLTS) in accordance with the requirements of the Land Transport Act 1998 (ACT).

Section 175 of the Act stipulates that a RLTS must take into account the amount of land transport funding likely to be available within the region during the period covered by the strategy and how this funding will be utilised.

Northland presently has no model that can formulate a hierarchical list that will assist in the most efficient allocation of available funding to the maintenance and upgrading of its regional land transport infrastructure.

Various studies have been undertaken which have assisted in identifying the major revenue earners of the region and the methods and routes that can be used to move these products i.e. tourists, timber, livestock. What none of these studies have identified is the negative multiplier effects to the region in the event one of the major land transport links is severed due to lack of maintenance funding. Nor can any model be found which regionally prioritises the land transport links based on their economic importance to Northland.

It is therefore the intention of this scoping study to argue the need for the introduction of such a model in order that the requirements of the Land Transport Act 1998 are met.

This scoping study has therefore focused on investigating the negative multiplier financial effects to the region in the event that one of the major land transport links is rendered inoperable for a period of fourteen days. This would be the anticipated time interval required to reopen this link in the event of a major land slip.

For the purposes of this scoping study, the link chosen is State Highway 1 on the south side of the Brynderwyns Hills. This highway is Northlands main land transport link to the rest of the country. The section of highway under investigation has been identified as having the potential of suffering a major land slip due to the nature of the topography that the highway transverses. Transit New Zealand is presently aware of the problem.

Due to the potential enormity of the impact to the various economic and social sectors of the region, it became clear that this scoping study could not cover all sectors of the regions economy. It was therefore decided to limit the study to ascertain the negative multiplier effects to those sectors where a substantial amount of relevant information could be sourced. These sectors were identified as the land transport industry, which would obviously be most affected, and the regions second largest industry, tourism.

It has been ascertained that the potential negative financial impact to the regional transport and tourist sectors will be between $101,793,500 (peak period) and $32,530,000 (off peak period).

From the information received and analysed, it is abundantly clear, that the region needs to undertake a comprehensive investigation into the negative multiplier effects that could be incurred in the event of land transport links being severed in the region. Based on the outcome of this investigation, a politically acceptable regional hierarchical list of land transport links based on their regional economic importance must be compiled and utilised in the allocation of funding for maintenance and upgrading programmes.

It is recommended that the ranking system used for the identification of the hierarchical list be modeled on the work undertaken by Professor Chris Kissling, entitled Linkage Importance in a Regional Highway Network. This work, undertaken in Nova Scotia, investigated the importance of identifying regionally important land transport links.