Transport 2026: The Infrastructure Graveyard (Part 1)
What New Zealand promised, planned, and never built — and what it tells us heading into the 2026 election.
Introduction: Why failed projects matter
Every election cycle brings bold transport promises: new rail lines, tunnels, motorways, rapid transit corridors. Some reshape cities. Others consume years of planning, millions in public money, and then quietly disappear.
This article is not about blame. It is about patterns.
Looking back over roughly the last 20 years, New Zealand’s transport system reveals a recurring cycle:
Political commitment
Detailed planning and consultation
Escalating cost, complexity, or governance friction
Cancellation, reset, or indefinite delay
Understanding this cycle is essential context for evaluating the next wave of election‑year promises.
This first instalment examines projects that were formally proposed and progressed, but ultimately cancelled, abandoned, or dismantled as programmes.
Part 2 will examine projects that were never cancelled, but endlessly reshaped or deferred. Part 3 will look at what these failures tell us about delivery risk for future proposals.
Auckland Light Rail: from flagship promise to cancellation
Few projects illustrate New Zealand’s transport challenges more clearly than Auckland Light Rail.
First proposed in the mid‑2010s and championed through multiple election cycles, the project was framed as:
A congestion solution
A climate intervention
A city‑shaping investment for Auckland’s south‑west
Years of planning followed. Multiple route options were developed. Governance structures were created. International partners were engaged.
By the early 2020s, the project had become synonymous with escalating costs, unclear delivery models, and political disagreement over scope and funding.
In early 2024, the government formally cancelled the project and directed the delivery entity to wind up operations.
Key lesson: when a project’s purpose expands faster than its delivery discipline, cancellation becomes politically inevitable.
Let’s Get Wellington Moving: when programmes collapse
Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) was not a single project, but a programme — a joint effort between central government, local government, and transport agencies.
Its ambition was broad: reshape Wellington’s transport system to improve safety, mode share, emissions, and urban form.
Over time, LGWM became a case study in:
Diffuse accountability
Conflicting objectives between partners
Public frustration at process without visible delivery
By late 2023, the programme was formally disestablished. Some individual projects continued in altered form, but the umbrella structure was gone.
Key lesson: programmes without clear ownership struggle to survive electoral change.
The Basin Reserve Flyover: when planning law stops a project
The Basin Reserve Flyover in Wellington followed a different path.
Rather than being cancelled by politicians, it was halted by the courts after years of legal challenge. Planning and consenting processes ultimately determined the project could not proceed.
The project consumed significant design effort and political capital, but never reached construction.
Key lesson: in New Zealand, planning and environmental law can be as decisive as funding or political support.
Auckland Harbour Bridge walking and cycling proposals
For more than a decade, successive proposals aimed to add walking and cycling access to Auckland Harbour Bridge.
Each iteration promised modest scope. Each encountered escalating cost, engineering complexity, or public controversy.
Eventually, the modern cycleway proposal was cancelled, folding into broader future harbour‑crossing conversations.
Key lesson: legacy infrastructure retrofits carry hidden complexity that often overwhelms early estimates.
Why these projects failed
Across these examples, early warning signs recur:
Expanding scope without firm cost control
Governance structures that blur accountability
Reliance on future political consensus
Misalignment between national ambition and local acceptance
These signals will reappear in future proposals — unless lessons are absorbed.
What comes next
Part 2 will examine projects that were never formally cancelled, but instead reshaped, paused, or endlessly re‑scoped — including harbour crossings, east‑west freight links, and rapid transit corridors.
Part 3 will step back further, identifying the systemic reasons New Zealand struggles to deliver large transport projects — and what that means for evaluating election‑year promises in 2026.
This article forms part of Kiwi Coaches’ Transport 2026 project: independent, non‑partisan analysis of transport policy, infrastructure, and delivery reality.