The secrecy of mega-projects

by Matt Lowrie

How is it that mega-projects costing billions get such little public involvement and scrutiny? That’s a question that Mayor Wayne Brown effectively hits on in an interview a few days ago with the Herald where he spoke on plans for an additional harbour crossing.

The Government is working on plans to build tunnels for a new Auckland harbour crossing in secret, according to Mayor Wayne Brown.

“The idea that we would have a cross-harbour study that’s secret from the city that surrounds the harbour is nuts,” he said.

The mayor is accusing the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) of keeping council in the dark over its feasibility study into options.

“We know nothing. We don’t even know where their office is. We don’t know who the consultants are. It’s bizarre.”

Transport Minister Chris Bishop rejected this, saying the Government has been “very open” about its plans and the process.

“For the last few months a barge has been operating in the harbour to look at the ground and seabed conditions, to help inform decisions … this is hardly a secret. I’ve talked about it with the mayor, and I understand he has met with NZTA about it as well.”

The mayor is of course still keen on the silly idea of a bridge making use of Meola Reef – which is something we covered last year, and would require plowing a motorway though Pt Chev and large parts of the western North Shore. While we disagree on his proposed solution, he’s not wrong on the issue of secrecy.

Sure, as Minister Bishop points out, it’s hardly a secret that testing of ground and seabed conditions has been ongoing for a while – but that comes part of a process that Auckland has had no involvement in. Auckland doesn’t even get a say in what form the crossing might take or what modes might be accommodated, as highlighted last year by then Minister of Transport Simeon Brown who ruled out the new crossing including active modes or light rail:

However, consistent with our commitment to getting back to basics, we have decided not to continue work on active mode options or the proposed light rail connection.

As an aside, it’s insanely stupid that we might spend billions on a new harbour crossing and lock in no active mode options for likely another few generations. No other city would do that, and we’d be a laughing stock if we did.

If a new harbour crossing ever does actually go ahead – and it’s hard to see any government wanting to stump up the eye-watering sums that would be required – it is a project that will happen to Auckland, and any local involvement is likely to be at the level of some of the smaller details.

One response might be that if the government is paying, they can do what they like. But this ignores the fact that any centrally-led project for our largest city, especially one on this scale, is going to have significant knock-on effects. For example, a new crossing potentially pointing a firehose of traffic towards the city centre at the same time Auckland has been working on making the city centre more people-friendly.

Another argument that sometimes comes up is that it is best practice to have experts quietly doing all of the technical work upfront. But that approach often also produces poor results, especially when those experts are left to define their own scope, and often embed their own preferences into the process. For example, I’ve heard numerous stories from many different projects where someone will make an early decision without any evidence to back it up, yet it gets treated as gospel from then on, and permanently changes the outcome of the project.

It’s worth pointing out that this secrecy is not something that’s unique to this government. The previous Labour government’s plans for an additional harbour crossing were similarly kept under wraps, as were even earlier iterations of the project. (Ed: see also Labour’s idea of a dedicated active modes bridge, which wasn’t tested with community stakeholders at all, and thus withered away when exposed to the daylight… when, with smarter early input and consideration of public transport, it could potentially have been a real vote-winner and an asset to the nation.)

We’ve also seen this behaviour with other projects, most recently with Light Rail, where the team behind it wouldn’t even say where the station locations would be.

It’s almost like the bigger the project, the more secrecy and the less public and local government involvement there is.

Media play a big role here too. Mega-projects get fawned over, with media often cheerleading them and very rarely looking into details of what it all means, what we’re getting for the mega-budgets, nor the ongoing costs (which include opportunity costs).

By contrast, look at the disproportionate attention that small projects get. Building a short section of cycleway, or proposing to take away a car park or two – or even just making people pay to use them – will often result in more column inches in the media, and more scrutiny from both local and central government politicians, than any multi-billion-dollar mega-project ever experiences.

All of this is the opposite of how it should be. The bigger the project, the more transparency and accountability there should be.

How do we change that?