Fendalton Rd costs argued

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 9

Fendalton Rd costs argued

SUZANNE KEEN

The more than $780,000 spent on buying land for the Fendalton Road widening would be difficult to recover if the full widening did not go ahead, the Planning Tribunal was told yesterday. A valuer, Mr Ronald Aubrey, said there was no compulsion for the owner of a property to buy back a strip of land sold for road widening. Because the. property owners would be the only potential buyers they could dictate any terms of purchase.

“In many cases it would not matter much if the land remained unused even if fenced off from the residential property.” Mr Gary Main, an engineer, told the tribunal that the Waimairi District Council’s policy of negotiating land purchases with owners who came to it had resulted in a steady flow of sales. About $600,000 had been spent on purchases up to January, with a further $183,000 spent since then.

Mr Main said that almost none of that property held would be needed if it was decided to proceed with option one for the widening, the residents’ preferred option, instead of option four, the council's preference. Option four requires 5m of widening on either side of the road.

The tribunal hearing has been reconvened to hear further evidence on option one, a four-lane road with no median strip. After the hearing in July last year, the tribunal asked the council to analyse that option under the new National Roads Board cost-benefit scheme.

Mr Main said that under that scheme option one had a benefit-cost ratio of 2.74:1 with bus bays, or 2.65:1 without bus bays. Option four has a ratio of 2.23:1. He had added the value of the land purchases up to January, 1989, as a cost to each of the options, because the council would have little chance of reco-

vering the amount spent even if it went ahead with the option which did not need the land.

“In the case of option one that cost is additional to the costs that would have been calculated if the council had been at square one and not holding any land at all.”

This method of calculating the ratio was criticised by Mr Peter McCombs, a traffic engineer appearing for the Fendalton Residents’ Association.

He said it was directly contrary to the procedures set out in the manual for the economic appraisal of roading improvement projects. The manual said land must never be treated as a "sunk cost” because the option of alternative use generally existed. Regardless of this it was obviously artificial to add land acquired for another purpose to the cost of option one, Mr McCombs said.

He added that in spite of the “unnecessary bur-

den” it was significant that option one still emerged as the preferred economic choice. Mr McCombs said he believed that the council’s chance to give adequate consideration to option one was also obscured by the layout and phraseology of a report presented to it by Mr Main after the tribunal’s interim decision.

After considering this and other evidence the council had reaffirmed its support for option four.

Mr Main said yesterday that the two reasons he did not believe option one should be built, in spite of its favourable benefit-cost ratio, were that it did not provide for on-street parking or the long-term guarantee of adequate safety, capacity and level of service that must be achieved by the major investment which the work on the road represented.

The hearing is before Judge Treadwell (chairman), Mrs Nedra Johnson and Mrs Molly Clark.