But those projects were given only high-level costings by Waka Kotahi-NZ Transport Agency. Over the last year, Waka Kotahi has been doing more detailed estimates of how much the roads will cost, a process called “baselining”.
Those baselines were recently delivered to Transport Minister Michael Wood, who is now considering what they mean for the continued viability of the 22 projects that make up the transport side of the $12b upgrade programme. Some of the costings could be considerably higher than estimated last year.
Asked if he would commit to following through on the projects as they were announced in the upgrade programme, Wood dodged the question. Instead, he said that the Government would be making decisions in the future.