Posts by Sacha
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the Vic Park tunnel. If we could get it to dive under the city as soon as possible (presumedly not on Tank Farm but hopefully?)
Probably too late given that work on the Vic tunnel starts quite soon. I remember something in one Wynyard proposal about the spine park running out along tank farm being perfect for the cityside end of the tunnel even if the phasing didn't match with the surrounding buildings (though I'd imagine their tenants would disagree). You'd construct transport links beneath, with rail veering to join Britomart. Don't remember where road went, but maybe branching off under the park as you suggest.
Given the cityside connection issues arise whether it's a bridge or tunnel, you can see the frustrations of lack of integrated planning. The dominance of transport funding over urban design also distorts things enormously.
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Simpson thinks you can start with a vision, get lots of people to believe in it and then everything will be alright.
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I am sure Jasmax spent a very productive lunchbreak on this one, but the fact is they are not bridge builders.Did Simpson describe the rushed early history of the initiative during his presentation at Architecture Week?
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Sir Owen Woodhouse says the latest changes breach the ACC scheme's principles. Given that he designed them, I'd listen, even though it's that notorious left-wing rag, the Herald.
Its five principles were community responsibility for accidents and supporting accident victims, comprehensive entitlement regardless of what caused the accident, complete rehabilitation, compensation for the whole period of incapacity at 80 per cent of previous earnings, and administrative efficiency.
Sir Owen said he saw the scheme as part of the social welfare system, not as an "insurance" scheme in which all future costs of this year's accidents needed to be funded immediately.
The "blow-out" in losses that led to last week's changes stemmed from a decision by the last National Government in 1998 to allow private sector competition for accident insurance, which required transforming the Accident Compensation Corporation on to the same funded basis as private insurers.
Sir Owen said: "If you have children you'd be concerned if you found that they estimate your child will be at school for so long, will or won't go to university and will cost so much, and that that full cost has to be paid at the age of 5 when they start school.
"It's the same thing with accident compensation."
So 'full funding' comes from the last time the Nats tried to privatise the scheme (oh, I mean 'introduce competition'). That agenda is not 'secret' at all - Key noted recently in a relaxed fashion that it's their pre-election policy to consider it, (but how dreadfully unfortunate that Rodders is demanding it be done right away).
You only have to listen to economists and policy experts like Michael Littlewood to understand that introducing competition for the only profitable part of the scheme is just creaming large amounts of public funds into private pockets while leaving taxpayers with most of the risk. That's why the insurance industry were salivating at those pre-election briefings. I'm sure they don't much care how it's described. I wonder how keen they would be though if they had to buy the whole thing including the future value.
However, to complicate matters politically, the boomer chestnut rears its bipartisan head again:
Labour's shadow ACC minister, David Parker, said Labour also supported moving ACC on to a fully-funded basis.
The alternative was to load future costs on to future taxpayers at a time when there would be far fewer taxpayers for every older person.
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Excellent issues - knew I could rely on PAS to raise them when others fail. I now have serious doubts.
Paul, I wish your #6 were true without reservations. Like the rest of our roading network it's heavy trucks that are the problem.
Bridge engineer Virlogeux (ta for link) seems to have specific engineering concerns with the Jasmax concept being unbalanced in terms of force loads. Nothing about the location, and he makes good points about a tunnel being pretty hard to draw attention to.
The traffic connections seem harder to resolve though. I'm pretty sure the North Shore rail is just a line running along the current busway, which is designed for that change. The city end is where the problems would occur.
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Craig, I do not know what either Key or myself could say that was any clearer. It's hardly a unique characterisation.
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Speaking of multiple axes, Telecom offer the arseterix. Keall gets in a couple of cunning subheads.
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To mobilise the political commitment. A three year cycle discourages long term thinking.
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Drive, orientation and kink all sound like reasonable axes - but really, an axis is a spectrum. Single spectrum model just not enough.
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Asexuals break the spectrum model - the middle would be balanced bicycles.
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The Herald had some coverage a couple of years ago - mentions the gradient being low enough for rail. Richard Simpson included the bridge in his presentation at Foo Camp, which was fascinating. Like Russell, I have yet to hear any decent reasons not to build it. Plus narrow-minded silver-spooner Bhatnagar thinks it's both nutty and amusing - what better endorsement.
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