Banks suggests selling airport shares to finance Hobson Bay tunnel

By BERNARD ORSMAN

New Auckland Mayor John Banks has suggested the city could sell its Auckland Airport shares to help pay for his grandest promise - a road, rail and sewer tunnel beneath Hobson Bay.

Mr Banks said yesterday that he would investigate the cost of building the tunnel and that it could be partly funded by sale of the shares or a toll.

The council's 25.9 per cent shareholding in the airport is worth about $350 million.

But a critic of the scheme, Auckland City political expert Dr Graham Bush, said building a tunnel beneath Hobson Bay was "cloud cuckoo land stuff" that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

And Hobson ward city councillor Victoria Carter, who stood on a platform opposing the motorway, said the tunnel was going to prove an impossible promise for Mr Banks to keep and he should concentrate instead on making progress on the Grafton Gully and Spaghetti Junction motorway projects that would make a real difference to congestion.

Dr Bush said that even doing a proper feasibility study on such a "bizarre proposal" would cost millions of dollars, employing consultants at hundreds of dollars an hour.

Mr Banks vigorously campaigned during the election race against the use of consultants by the council.

He said a tunnel carrying a four-lane eastern highway, the main trunk railway line and a new sewer under the bay might not be feasible "but I don't want to be just ramming another motorway across Hobson Bay, which is arguably one of the great environmental heritages of Auckland City".

"It could be a joint venture between the Auckland City Council and Government.

"For instance, we have $300 million from the sale of the airport shares. What I am going to do is get Auckland moving, which means we have got to deal with the circle roads, and I want to get that well under way inside the next three years."

The Auckland highway manager for Transit New Zealand, Terry Brown, said the Government's central roading body had done no work on the eastern highway, let alone plans for a tunnel beneath Hobson Bay.

But Mr Brown said Transit was looking at building some "cut and cover" tunnels as part of the State Highway 20 extension from Hillsborough Rd to the Northwestern Motorway and a tunnel beneath Hobson Bay was "just one step different".

Transit general manager Dr Robin Dunlop has previously told the council that Transit would pay the estimated $150 million cost of building a four-lane highway through the eastern suburbs to the city.

A spokesman for Stop the Eastern Motorway (Stem), Mark Sainsbury, said a tunnel would be better than no tunnel for environmental reasons, but it would not lessen the stupidity of building another motorway.

Stem has warned Mr Banks and new pro-road councillors about the wisdom of proceeding with a motorway when international wisdom said that building more motorways did not solve traffic congestion and in fact worsened it.

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