$290m plan to ease Auckland bottlenecks

About $290 million of improvements to ease bottlenecks on local arterial roads are scheduled in the first annual Auckland Land Transport Plan.

The plan, co-ordinating nine different agencies' spending on roads and public passenger transport in the region, adds the local layer on to the state highway programme announced by Transit New Zealand last Friday.

A key arterial road project in the 2006-2007 plan is to widen Tiverton Rd and Wolverton St for New Lynn traffic to link with the SH20 extension to Mt Roskill.

Improvements to the link between Te Atatu Rd and the Northwestern Motorway - by providing a lane for buses and high-occupancy vehicles - will be tied in with Transit's widening of the Te Atatu Rd overbridge.

Neilson St is also due for attention to improve access in the Onehunga-Pakuranga Corridor.

Auckland Regional Transport Authority acting chief executive Fergus Gammie said the business community had called for continuing improvements to roading.

The plan allowed for continued work on the Northern Busway and stations and a start on the central transport corridor for dedicated bus lanes between Newmarket and Britomart transport centre.

However, Mr Gammie said, there would be only a small increase in the amount allocated to passenger transport services and this sum was mainly to cover rising fuel bills.

Services could not increase by much unless $700 million extra became available in the next 10 years.

North Shore Mayor George Wood said he was pleased to get a commitment from the authority about introducing an Auckland-wide electronic ticketing system for use on buses, ferries and trains by 2008.


ALLOCATIONS

Auckland Regional Transport Plan 2006-07

Key spending:

* Improving and replacing local roads, $291 million.

* Local road maintenance, $150 million.

* Passenger transport services, $151 million.

* Passenger transport infrastructure, $101 million.

* Transport demand management, $11.6 million.

* Walking and cycling projects, $10.6 million.