Bus vote clears cars from Grafton Bridge

By BERNARD ORSMAN

Cars and commercial vehicles will be banned from Grafton Bridge under plans to make way for a dedicated busway between the central city and Newmarket.

Trucks are already banned from the historic 1910 concrete bridge, which needs strengthening before it can take heavy traffic.

The Auckland City Council's transport committee yesterday voted to go ahead with a rapid city busway that passes Auckland University in Symonds St and Auckland Hospital in Park Rd on its route to Newmarket.

This follows a decision by the John Banks-led council to ditch work on a light rail route up Queen St and Wellesley St and across Grafton Gully to Newmarket in favour of a busway.

The committee also voted to continue investigations into a $400 million rail tunnel through the central city, running from Britomart to Mt Eden, with stations near the Town Hall and Karangahape Rd.

City Vision politicians believe the busway and rail tunnel could be rolled into a single light rail corridor for less than a third of the cost.

The "Central Transit Corridor" busway is planned to run from Britomart, along Customs St East, up Anzac Ave, Symonds St, across Grafton Bridge and along Park Rd to the intersection with Carlton Gore Rd. It will carry about 1400 buses on weekdays.

The council is still looking at making the final connection to Newmarket.

One option is an elevated road over the existing railway line to Newmarket railway station to get around traffic congestion, high land values and development pressures.

The current bus route to Newmarket goes all the way up Symonds St and down Khyber Pass Rd, taking a good 20 minutes. There are few bus lanes.

Senior planner John Duthie said the new busway would be considerably quicker because there would be fewer traffic lights and buses would get priority at the remaining lights. Some bus services would still go down Khyber Pass Rd.

He said the 13,000 cars a day that used Grafton Bridge - a moderately busy road by city standards - would be able to use a new bridge going from the top of Wellesley St to Grafton Rd. The bridge is part of the Grafton Gully motorway works.

The council has also looked at keeping Grafton Bridge open to traffic and building a new bridge just to the north for buses at a cost of about $9 million.

However, the preference was to use Grafton Bridge for buses and the Wellesley St bridge for cars, Mr Duthie said.

City Vision politicians accused their Auckland Citizens & Ratepayers Now opponents of taking a "head in the sand" approach to the busway/light rail and tunnel proposals, saying the ad hoc planning ignored local and regional transport needs.

Transport committee chairman Greg McKeown said a heavy rail underground tunnel would create a rail spine for Auckland. A fellow Auckland C & R Now councillor, Doug Armstrong, said it was common sense to look at the tunnel.