This page relates to the 2021-24 National Land Transport Programme.
This page outlines the policy on investment in uneconomic transport infrastructure to ensure investment decisions are informed by a range of options with robust assessment within legislative and national settings.
This policy applies to activities that will renew, reinstate, upgrade or replace uneconomic transport infrastructure with new transport infrastructure. Uneconomic activities meet the following two criteria:
For activities with a total cost of less than $2 million, please refer to the guidance for low-cost, low-risk programmes.
Low-cost, low-risk programme development for the 2021-24 NLTP [PDF, 167 KB]
Where an investment decision relating to the renewal, reinstatement, upgrading of transport infrastructure, or replacement with new transport infrastructure, is determined to be uneconomic, we (Waka Kotah NZ Transport Agencyi as investor) require a range of options (including alternatives to providing an infrastructure solution) to be considered and presented with a robust assessment of social, cultural, economic and environmental impacts (including non-monetised impacts).
‘Uneconomic’ in this context is defined as improvement activities with a BCR < 1.0, or a NPV < 0.
An assessment will consider a range of factors including legislative requirements, national settings (including any relevant national adaptation plan, Waka Kotahi adaptation plan and regional adaptation plan), social impacts (including distribution of impacts), non-monetised benefits/costs, risk analysis, relative priority of the proposed investment at the regional and national level and a balance of the needs of current and future generations.
Proposals above a total cost of $2 million to renew, reinstate, upgrade or replace with new transport infrastructure determined to be uneconomic, will be referred to the Waka Kotahi Board for an investment decision, unless the existence of non-monetised impacts means that overall benefits exceed costs.
We encourage approved organisations and Waka Kotahi (for its own activities) to seek advice from a Waka Kotahi investment advisor when applying for funding. For situations where the BCR is not applicable, for example like-for-like bridge replacements, the cost–benefit appraisal should use least whole-of-life economic cost. The Waka Kotahi Board will consider proposals on a case-by-case basis.
Weight and/or speed restrictions on transport infrastructure, where these are shown to be the best option, should be imposed and/or continued.
We expect approved organisations and Waka Kotahi (for its own activities) to apply the decision tree shown in the simplified procedure SP2 in the Waka Kotahi Monetised benefits and costs manual, Decision chart for bridge replacements on low volume roads, to guide selection of the preferred option for bridge replacements on low volume roads.
