Six Years, $228 Million, Zero Metres of Track

Auckland Light Rail ran for six years, spent $228 million, and laid zero metres of track. At its peak the project was paying about $920,000 a week to two engineering firms. Not to build anything. To plan, re-plan, and re-plan again, through three different versions of the route. In January 2024 a new government cancelled it as part of a 100-day plan, and the public got nothing back for a quarter of a billion dollars except some very expensive PDFs. I want to be upfront about what this series is, because the material is political and the timing is an election year. This isn't a political hit job. It's pattern recognition on the public record, and the pattern has both parties' fingerprints all over it. The same meeting, every three years I've spent a chunk of my career in exec rooms, at startups and at big companies, and I've been through my share of strategy rewrites. Even one rewrite, done inside one company, with everyone trying their best, costs you about a year. Roadmaps get…