$1.33b road plan 'recipe for rat-run' in Panmure

Photo / Steven McNicholl

Panmure residents fear $1.33 billion of transport works will not stop them being swamped by eastern suburbs traffic, which they predict will have trouble reaching a new trenched road.

Auckland City transport planners want to build a north-south arterial road to Glen Innes in a trench beneath the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway as part of works called the Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative, or Ameti.

They want to build a first stage to Morrin Rd by 2015 for about $145 million, and then extend it as a four-lane arterial link to an "innovation precinct" planned around Auckland University's Tamaki campus by 2019.

But the Panmure Community Action Group says this will not stop commuters from eastern suburbs such as Pakuranga from "rat-running" through its town centre and residential streets, as traffic will be unable to get to the new road by any direct route.

The group is proposing a cheaper link from a surface intersection with the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway to divert freight traffic from the six-way Panmure roundabout, which the council wants to replace with an intersection with fewer road connections.

Group spokesman Keith Sharp says the only point in building a trenched road would be for a revived eastern highway across Hobson Bay to Auckland, which Auckland City Mayor John Banks insists is not an option after his support of it cost him his mayoral robes in 2004.

Mr Sharp said instead of trying to reach the trenched road, traffic will keep heading north through existing Panmure streets, which would become even busier if the city council blocked access to Jellicoe Rd from the new intersection.

He believed the city council, which has awarded a $15 million design contract for the Panmure components of Ameti, had spent so much time and money on plans laid with minimal public consultation "that they just can't see the obvious".

But the council's transport general manager, Penny Pirrit, said the strategic intention was for eastern suburbs commuters to use Waipuna Bridge to the south of Panmure Basin to reach the new link road.

Segregating the new road from the Ellerslie Panmure Highway was fundamental to the project, as it would reduce congestion at the roundabout site and at the intersection with the Mt Wellington Highway.