Business wants to fast-track motorway

Auckland business leaders are urging the Government to borrow whatever it takes to build a western motorway bypass - and then agonise later over whether to raise tolls to pay for it.

Employers and Manufacturers' Association (Northern) executive officer Peter Atkinson told a Transit NZ hearing in Auckland yesterday that the Government should remove any risk the public might reject tolls and just get on with completing the 35km chain of motorways.

About $1.8 billion is needed to complete the bypass, more than half of it for a 5km motorway extension through Mt Albert to join the Northwestern Motorway at Waterview.

But Mr Atkinson said returns to the regional economy from an alternative route between Manukau and Albany - as much as $830 million a year according to a 2004 report commissioned by the Automobile Association - were such that there could be no more delays.

"Our feeling is, why can't it be funded immediately out of Government borrowing, whether or not it is to be tolled?" Mr Atkinson said.

Transit's draft 10-year state-highway forecast describes the western ring route as its top national priority because of the increasing fragility of the existing single motorway spine through central Auckland.

But the agency also says it has no hope of completing all the missing links on target in 2015 without being able to borrow $860 million for repayment through tolls.

This is on top of $3.2 billion it expects to receive for Auckland highways in Government grants through Land Transport NZ.

To gain approval allowing it to raise tolls for the western route, Transit must assure the Government of strong community support.

Since issuing the draft forecast in February, its board has deferred by several months a decision on various tolling options for public consultation.

The official explanation is that it needs more technical information, given the legal and practical complexities of designing a scheme under legislation which allows tolls on existing highways only if they are "physically or operationally integral to a new road".

But sources have suggested the Government may be losing the political will to back tolls.

Transit corporate services general manager Martin Fletcher did little to allay Mr Atkinson's nervousness about that project, saying almost all of Auckland may fall within the definition of an "affected community", from which strong support must be gained.

But Mr Fletcher told him Transit was "pretty confident" the Government would find more money for its overall highways programme.

The draft forecast also disclosed a possible $685 million national funding deficit over the next decade, which has forced Transit to delay key projects by two or three years, despite a Government pledge to shore up the gap.

Although Transit is still committed to building a $1 billion motorway extension to Waterview by 2015, a $233 million addition to the western link past Hobsonville has been delayed by three years, and a $210 million connection at Manukau by a year.

It has also delayed by a year each of two key projects needed to take advantage of improvements to the central motorway junction, a tunnel under Victoria Park and a replacement Newmarket Viaduct, neither of which is now programmed to start before 2009.

But a duplicate Mangere Bridge, yet another link needed to complete the western route, is on track to be built between then and 2013 for $204 million.