KEY POINTS:
Auckland Airport is upset that Transit NZ is threatening to defer a duplicate motorway crossing of Manukau Harbour until after the 2011 Rugby World Cup if it cannot toll the Western Ring Route.
"We believe this directly contradicts the undertakings established in Budget 2006 and is completely unnecessary," the airport company says in one of more than 21,000 submissions received by Transit in seven weeks of public consultations that ended yesterday.
Transit says it cannot complete the ring route by a target of 2015 - and perhaps not even until 2030 - without Government approval of tolls to fill an $800 million-plus funding gap to supplement $1.3 billion of committed spending.
Although Transit's biggest challenge will be a 5km motorway link through Waterview for up to $1.5 billion, it has listed the $265 million harbour crossing as a potential casualty if it cannot introduce a 35-year tolling scheme along the route.
But the airport company believes this contradicts a Government pledge in the Budget that a duplicate Mangere Bridge and an extra motorway lane on each side would be substantially complete for the Rugby World Cup.
It is also concerned at the potential impact of tolls on access to the airport, if motorists avoiding a $1.50 peak-time charge along the Onehunga waterfront jam local streets.
That is the highest charge of any of seven tolling points which Transit is proposing along the 48km route between Manukau and Albany, although motorists will be able to drive across the bridge itself free of charge.
The airport company says it supports tolls in principle, both for raising construction money and for reducing travel demand, but believes they should be introduced across the region "and not as an ad hoc response to a specific funding shortfall in one part of the network".
"It is important that tolling schemes do not result in distortions or inequities between different parts of the network or between different communities," it says in its submission.
Chief executive Don Huse added yesterday that the tolling proposal had been "severely compromised" to comply with an ill-suited legislative environment which allowed charges only on new roads and where free alternative routes were available.
His concerns are shared by the Road Transport Forum, representing 80 per cent of the commercial truck fleet, although that organisation has given conditional support to tolls as a sign to Transit "that our industry is prepared to meet its share of costs".
The forum has in a submission expressed concern about the political sustainability and "obvious injustice" of proposing tolls to drive past Auckland's generally less affluent western suburbs, and not those in the east.
"It is difficult to accept that the people of West Auckland and other associated communities should be faced with paying a toll for using the Western Ring Route when the people from other parts of the Auckland region will be able to travel on recently-constructed motorways without incurring a toll," it says.
It says Transit's intention of tolling a road which it wants drivers to use, but not to charge them on other parts of the network where it wants less traffic, is "clearly very muddled thinking".
The forum is calling for a full Government review of road charges in pursuit of a more efficient, equitable and sustainable system.
And it wants a more rigorous analysis of the costs of reducing the environmental impacts of projects such as the Waterview link.
