sentences:  He argued in an editorial that the project represented a "tunnel with no hill", costed at that time at about $1.9 billion or about $600 million a kilometre.Therefore, the motorway should instead be built as a surface road, and the savings invested into water storage projects benefitting farming.On 30 January 2009 Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced his concern with the $3.16 billion cost (including financing costs of more than $500 million and an upgrade of the nearby Northwestern Motorway for $240 million) of three-lane tunnels.