Airport firm deplores wait for new bridge

Auckland's international airport company is piling pressure on Transit New Zealand for a second Mangere bridge to end severe traffic delays for passengers desperate to catch flights.

The company expressed dismay at a Transit hearing in Auckland yesterday that the agency did not intend to start building a $146 million duplicate four-lane bridge until 2009.

That timetable, proposed in the agency's draft 10-year state highway plan, is the same as notified last year.

But the estimated project cost has risen by $43 million since then.

A second bridge with a major interchange at the Onehunga end would take up to four years to build, by which time the airport company expects road traffic heading its way to increase 50 per cent to almost 90,000 vehicles a day.

The company, in a submission on Transit's draft plan, said efficient access to the airport was vital to the economic health of New Zealand.

Engineering general manager Steve Reindler said in the document that the highways agency had given insufficient attention to this need.

Noting a description by Transit itself of the existing bridge as a bottleneck on a critical sector of Auckland's incomplete western ring route, he called for the project to be brought forward for construction to start no later than next year.

Traffic congestion was otherwise likely to become "intolerable" for air passengers, notably business travellers caught out in the rush hours.

Mr Reindler also questioned delays to $341 million of extensions to both ends of the existing Southwestern Motorway along State Highway 20, through Mt Roskill and to Manukau to connect with the Southern Motorway.

Construction is not now expected to start until spring.

Although tenders for the 4km Roskill extension from Hillsborough closed last month, Transit officials have warned that quoted prices suggest a project allocation of $167.4 million "will be under pressure".

Capital projects general manager Colin Crampton also said in a report to the board that tendering for the Manukau extension would have to wait until that project was confirmed in the 10-year highways plan in July.

The airport firm and the new Council for Infrastructure Development urged Transit to seek private funding to hasten the new bridge and other projects, such as a $1 billion motorway extension through Avondale.

Construction of that link is not due to start until 2010, and the Auckland Regional Land Transport Committee has voted to omit it from a 10-year strategic package in favour of a hefty increase in public transport spending.

Transit's regional manager Richard Hancy said last night that a southwestern corridor working group comprising his agency and local councils had started looking at both the Avondale link and a duplicate Mangere bridge.

But part of its brief was to ensure all modes of land transport were considered, such as a possible rapid transit route to the airport using buses or rail.

Infrastructure council chief executive Stephen Selwood, formerly of the AA, told Transit he accepted a need for more public transport cash but not at the expense of strategic road networks.

He said an AA report last year estimated the completion of the western ring route as an alternative to the Southern Motorway's Spaghetti Junction bottleneck would deliver $850 million in economic benefits to the region annually.

"That's just a bit less than the cost of the project, in one year."

He called on Transit to take a more strategic approach to developing transport corridors, rather than building parts of roading networks piecemeal as Government finances allowed, and recommended encouraging private sector partners to meet funding gaps.

Mr Selwood said he believed most people would accept paying tolls if that was what it took to avoid road construction delays.