KEY POINTS:
A $1.5 billion super-transport package for Auckland's booming Tamaki River suburbs cleared its first political hurdle yesterday.
Auckland City's transport committee decided to recommend to council a revised "indicative" budget of $871 million over 15-20 years for the scheme, in which Manukau City and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority are also partners.
The Auckland council has already allowed $800 million over 10 years for such a scheme, which officials insist is separate from the aborted eastern transport corridor.
The proposed network of new or widened roads, bridges and underpasses between Pakuranga and Glen Innes - many with bus and cycle lanes - has emerged from a $3.4 million study which also proposes better design and landscaping to encourage more people to walk to buses or railway stations.
But Action Hobson councillor Christine Caughey, who won office with transport committee chairman Richard Simpson by opposing the earlier plan, called this scheme another "triumph for roads and for private vehicles".
"The eastern motorway is alive and well in this plan unless we can get a hole in Britomart station," she said referring to a proposal to dig a tunnel through the rear of Auckland's main railway terminal to allow enough trains to circulate to reduce road congestion.
The transport committee's resolution included a condition that the scheme should be paid for principally from "sources other than rates".
Council officers expect Government subsidies will cover half the cost and that about $200 million will come from loans repayable from development levies as improved transport spurs growth.
They have also suggested $100 million be raised from tolls, an idea that may become contentious when the city council receives the committee's recommendations next week.
Manukau City's transport committee, which last year rejected tolls on a duplicated Pakuranga Bridge, will decide on April 2 whether to recommend the scheme for public consultation.
Although up to 566 properties around the Tamaki River may have to be bought for road-widening, officials of the two councils are providing only general details to owners until political leaders approve a round of public consultations.
The scheme has qualified support from the Northern Employers and Manufacturers Association and the National Road Carriers Association. Manufacturers association chief executive Alasdair Thompson expressed concern that features of the scheme were still more than 10 years away, but said it was a "step in the right direction".
He was confident that a growing need for an eastern motorway would eventually turn the political tide in its favour.
Citizens and Ratepayers Now councillors, who lost votes for supporting the motorway, raised fears that a new arterial road proposed to Glen Innes would feed unacceptable traffic loads into streets in Auckland's eastern bays.
Council roads manager Matthew Rednall said a projected 900 more vehicles a day on Kohimarama Rd would not be a dramatic increase, and the new arterial would siphon traffic off other local roads.
