According to CNN:
Britain is building one of the world’s most expensive railways
US$416 million per mile? Pfft! Not even close to Auckland’s CRL currently running at around US$1.5 billion per mile.
And why is it so expensive here? Cost of plant and labour is not significantly more expensive than anywhere else. But the cost of regulation, compliance, consenting, cultural appeasement and so on is crushing NZ infrastructure productivity.
But will the Fast Track Approvals Bill make a difference?
No Minister 
And who said this just last year, New Zealand is the most expensive country in the world to build new infrastructure??
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That was the charge levelled recently by Sean Sweeney, chief executive of the City Rail Link (CRL).
I included that in my post a couple of months ago looking at Britain’s cost-outcome problems in energy, housing, transport, healthcare and education – Like Mother, like Daughter. Remarkably and depressingly similar.
As with you I also wonder if our shiny new replacement for the RMA is going to do the trick it will it just devolve to more of the same? Would be interested to know if any blogger in NZ is watching this process in detail and can inform? Given how he’s hammered away at the uselessness and stupidity of the RMA for almost twenty years now I would have thought that Peter Cresswell over at Not PC would be the one, but he hasn’t written that much about it. Perhaps he’s also in a wait-and-see mode?
The RMA is a political football. it was brought in by the National Government in the 1990’s, because of issues of consistentcy.
But the RMA is easily mis-used eg, a rival supermarket will contest the opposition building a new one. At one point, the Port of Tauranga opposed Port Taranaki upgrading a local railway tunnel in New Plymouth.
National have wanted to replace the RMA since at least 2020, but Labour opposed them on this.
Labour did have/had a replacement that was 3 times bigger than the present RMA.
It was badly written and was full of errors and inconsistentcies, requiring quite a few ammendments. If brought in, you would never build anything, anywhere.
As it was with the existing RMA, the last government would simply over ride it if it gave the result they didn’t like.