Better wait than wrong: tunnel plea

An architect's impression of an air vent for the Waterview tunnel. Photo / Supplied

Auckland's Waterview motorway should be delayed if the Canterbury earthquakes mean it cannot be built without environmental compromises, says a lawyer for community groups scrutinising the $1.7 billion project.

Douglas Allan, representing a coalition of three groups including Living Communities and the Mt Albert Residents' Association, told a board of inquiry hearing yesterday that the Transport Agency might argue the quakes would render improvements to the project an "unaffordable luxury".

However, he said, "these are works that the submitters say need to be got right - even if that involves some delay as a result of prioritising Christchurch recovery works".

Although the Government is considering delays to others of its seven "roads of national significance", it is understood to remain keen for construction to start before the end of this year on a new 4.5km half-tunnelled motorway through Waterview and a widened Northwestern Motorway from St Lukes to Te Atatu.

But the Transport Agency is opposing on mainly cost grounds a push by the community groups - backed by the Auckland Council and the Albert Eden Local Board - for a 27m vehicle emissions tower at the Owairaka end of a 2.5km pair of tunnels to be re-positioned, and for associated ventilation buildings to be largely buried.

The local board also backs a bid for a 25m tower at the northern end to be moved to the other side of Great North Rd from the agency's preferred site next to Waterview Primary School.

Mr Allan said submitters wanted the board of inquiry to keep costs of environmental mitigation in perspective. "Even if the relief sought by them has a total cost in the order of $40 million, that is only 2 per cent of the project cost," he said.

It represented just four times the annual bill for electricity which the agency says will be needed to run fans to expel vehicle emissions from the ventilation towers, except when nocturnal traffic pollution is deemed low enough to switch them off.

Even several agency witnesses have acknowledged a preference for the southern tower to be moved 70m further southeast.

That option, which the agency says could cost an extra $11 million to $21 million, also won support yesterday from Housing New Zealand as the owner of most of a row of houses in Hendon Ave.

The community groups, council and local board also want a cycleway and up to three extra footbridges across Oakley Creek and the western railway line, but the agency argues that the tunnels under that area will be substantial mitigation in themselves.

It proposes one footbridge and a cycleway stopping short of the tunnels.

COUNTING UP

$1.7b Cost of the Waterview motorway project.
4.5kmThe length of the half-tunnelled motorway.
27m The vehicle emissions tower that community boards would like repositioned.