Airport criticises transit-link delay

Britomart station. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Auckland's airport company says plans to leave it without a dedicated transport link until at least 2031 are "simply unacceptable".

It is calling on the Auckland Regional Transport Committee to shorten the delay and at least provide dedicated public transport road lanes before 2020.

In a submission on a draft regional land transport strategy for the next 30 years, Auckland International Airport decried the lack of a designated or protected rapid transit route to its Mangere base, through which more than 13 million travellers pass annually and where about 12,000 people work.

Although the draft proposes construction of a central Auckland tunnel by 2021 to open up Britomart to through trains, it has delayed a rail loop to the airport from Onehunga and Manukau until the final decade of the strategy - 2031 to 2040.

The submission points to a lack of detail around timing and delivery of a "quality transport network" until the airport is connected to rapid transit.

"We therefore are concerned that the strategy offers very little improvement to airport users until rail is delivered sometime after 2030," it says.

The company says it remains committed to providing passage for a rail link or other rapid transit through its own property, but the lack of planning beyond its boundary is putting its master-planning under pressure.

It says although Auckland City is taking steps to make it easier for road traffic to get to the airport through Royal Oak and Epsom, that is not a regional strategic network solution, and is "fundamentally incompatible with the character of those suburbs".

The city also intends to upgrade Dominion Rd to take extended bus lanes which would ultimately join the recently-extended Southwestern Motorway, but the airport submission says it is unaware of a completion date and that connections with the central business district at the other end seem very uncertain.

The submission is silent, however, on the Transport Agency's promotion of the western ring route via the proposed $1.15 billion Waterview motorway link as a viable future passage between central Auckland and the airport.

Airport company property general manager Peter Alexander yesterday described Waterview as "a given", as was the 70 per cent completed duplicate Manukau Harbour motorway crossing, but indicated that the main thrust of the submission was addressed at unresolved public transport challenges.

He said that although the Airbus Express bus service offered an extensive 24-hour timetable and high frequency, its reliability was hampered by traffic congestion at peak times, sometimes extending scheduled 30-minutes trips to more than an hour.

The submission estimates that 3 per cent of people travelling to the airport do so by public transport, compared with about 30 per cent of travellers through London's Heathrow Airport.

It says proposed upgrades to State Highways 20A and 20B on the northern and eastern approaches to the airport between 2021 and 2031 will be very necessary and welcome, but is concerned about an increase in traffic not on airport business using these as a through route.

Mr Alexander said there was a need for a link between the two stretches of highway, to take pressure off the intersection of George Bolt Memorial Drive and Tom Pearce Drive.