BROADCASTS.com

Transport Minister Michael Wood has left the door open to delaying the delivery of some of New Zealand\u2019s most high-profile roading projects.

They include widening the southern motorway from Papakura to Drury south of Auckland and the\xa0\u014ctaki to north of Levin expressway.

The government is \u201crescoping\u201d projects in the $8.7 billion NZ Upgrade programme, which includes 19 high-profile transport projects. The projects were announced back in 2020 but massive cost blowouts saw several of the most high-profile roads axed in 2021 despite a $1.9b cash injection.

It comes after an appeal to the Ombudsman revealed many of the projects face \u201cred\u201d ratings for their potential to go over budget.

Upgrade roads include Auckland\u2019s Penlink, and Wellington\u2019s \u014ctaki to North of Levin (O2NL) and the Melling interchange, and Tauranga\u2019s Takitimu North Link.

Wood was keen to say there would be no cuts to the programme this time, but has not taken back some trimming of the projects and rephasing to deal with cost inflation.

\u201cThe Government is committed to delivering the significant transport projects that are funded through NZUP,\u201d Wood said.

\u201cThere will be no cuts or significant paring back, but as is always the case there will be work to find efficiencies as projects go through detailed design and implementation.

Waka Kotahi warned projects are likely to go over budget. Photo / Waka Kotahi

An announcement is expected on the future of the programme in the weeks following the Budget. No decisions have been made on whether the projects will need an additional cash injection.

\u201cMany NZUP projects are already in delivery. Confirmed arrangements for the final few large projects will be confirmed in the near future,\u201d Wood said.

National\u2019s transport spokesman Simeon Brown said the Govenment needed to \u201ccome clean about the status of the NZ Upgrade programme\u201d

\u201cThese are roads they cancelled and then promised and now they look like they may be cancelled again.

\u201cLabour misled New Zealanders when they committed to this programme of works. They already cancelled Mill Road and Whang\u0101rei to Port Marsden,\u201d Brown said.

\u201cLabour can\u2019t be trusted with roads,\u201d he said.

In February, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency chief executive Nicole Rosie confirmed in a select committee some of the projects were being \u201crescoped\u201d.

When asked by Brown whether more money was needed to deliver the entire NZUP, Rosie said that if Waka Kotahi did not know the \u201cscope\u201d of the projects it was impossible to know if they needed more funding.

\u201cIf we don\u2019t know the scope, we can\u2019t tell you the answer to that,\u201d Rosie said.

\xa0\u201cIn reality the Government has been very clear that it wants to operate within the envelope that\u2019s available to them, so the rescoping is around looking at how they can continue on those projects within the money that\u2019s available,\u201d she said.

Waka Kotahi provides regular reporting on the health of the projects. Details from these reports were withheld from Official Information Act requests, but a successful appeal to the Ombudsman by Brown and the National Party has seen details released.

The report, already nearly a year old, but released by the Ombudsman this year, gave each of the transport projects a health rating on a traffic light scale for their propensity to go over budget or over time.

Roads like Penlink, were given a \u201cgreen\u201d rating for all criteria, but roads like \u014ctaki to north of Levin or the Melling interchange were given \u201cred\u201d ratings for their likelihood to go over budget.

- Thomas Coughlan, NZ Herald

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.