October 25, 2013 3:00pm by David Farrar

Wellington Northern Corridor gets more beneficial

Wellington’s road of national significance is expected to create more jobs, reduce travel times and save more lives than previously thought.

The NZ Transport Agency also predicts its major roading project between Wellington Airport and Levin will return $3 billion in benefits for a $2.5b spend.

The agency last crunched the numbers on the Wellington road of national significance, known as the Wellington Northern Corridor, in 2009 when the project was announced.

Since then, it has come up with more detailed designs for many of the project sections. It has also obtained resource consent for the Transmission Gully highway and the McKays to Peka Peka expressway.

The agency now believes the Wellington Northern Corridor will deliver 865 additional permanent jobs to the Wellington region, whereas it previously estimated 650.

It is predicted construction will have generated 8000 jobs by the time all of the sections are complete in 2022.

This is expected to peak in 2018 when 1000 people will be busy putting the road together.

It is also now believed the road will shave 40 minutes off the trip between Wellington Airport and Levin during the morning peak by 2031, compared with earlier forecasts of 35 minutes.

40 minutes faster is a huge time saving.

The number of fatal and serious crashes is also expected to drop from 140 to 100 in the five years after construction is complete. The predicted cost of the project is now $2.5b, in 2012 dollars, which is down slightly from the $2.6b projection made four years ago.

The benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of the project has also been bumped up from 1.1 to 1.6, meaning that for every $1 spent the project will return $1.60 in benefits.

Fewer crashes and deaths. Cheaper construction costs and greater benefits. All sounds good.