$35m for transport crucial says mayor

By PHILIP ENGLISH

Auckland Mayor Christine Fletcher believes the region's traffic congestion will not be solved unless the Government hands over $35 million of the $65 million asked for by Tranz Rail to improve public transport access to rail corridors.

Mrs Fletcher said yesterday that a solution to Auckland's transport problems also depended on settling the concerns of Northland councils over the use of rail corridors.

The councils have threatened legal action against the $65 million deal worked out between Tranz Rail and Auckland's political leaders. They are worried that Northland might lose its heavy rail access to Auckland along the western rail corridor. They fear that the yet-to-be-decided mode for public transport along the corridor could exclude heavy rail.

Mrs Fletcher said: "I do not want a solution which is detrimental to the North."

She said the Northland concerns, to be debated at a meeting next month, and Auckland transport woes stemmed from a lack of comprehensive planning in the past, which she blamed on successive governments.

Mrs Fletcher said she was cancelling a public transport study trip to Britain financed by the British Government because of the approaching deadline for final settlement of the $65 million deal.

"Without that $35 million, the deal will not proceed ... The deal will stand or fall on the $35 million from the Government ... The region has only a short time period to put its case to the Government."

Last time bureaucrats set September 30 for the deadline but then discovered that was a Saturday. It has since been extended to October 2.

Transport Minister Mark Gosche could not be reached for comment but has said in the past that the Government was not involved in the negotiations over the $65 million deal.