KEY POINTS:
Auckland City faces a $14 million cost blowout to a key transport project around one of its busiest intersections.
Project Greenlane, centred around a widening of Great South Rd for bus lanes and improvements to its intersection with Greenlane East and Greenlane West, is now expected to cost the city council up to $25.98 million and take nine months longer than envisaged.
That compares with $12.2 million which the council approved in 2003, including a subsidy of $5.3 million from Government agency Land Transport NZ, and the project is not now expected to be completed until July next year.
It also threatens to eat into money for future transport projects. Neither does the new estimate include $5.6 million for land purchases and compensation for business losses, particularly to car sales yards disrupted by roadworks, nor close to $5 million spent by Transit NZ on widening the adjoining Greenlane interchange with the Southern Motorway.
It follows a series of difficulties such as land purchase delays and traffic management challenges, to uncertainty over where underground service lines were buried and the discovery of hard volcanic rock beneath footpaths ripped up for road widening.
Complaints by businesses about median safety barriers preventing right-turns along a 600m length of Great South Rd between the Greenlane intersection and the Harp of Erin led to a six-month delay. Although the barriers have returned, the council has promised to start dismantling them in about eight weeks and then to complete road-widening work in stages, to limit disruption.
As well as building a bus lane on each side of Great South Rd, the council is increasing the capacity of its intersection with Greenlane East and Greenlane West, and adding a cycle path as far as Wheturangi Rd. It has already widened and laid a new footpath along part of Campbell Rd, and is planting trees and adding traffic "calming" measures such as speed humps at the entrances to side streets.
Transit reports improved traffic flows to the motorway through its interchange improvements, which include new northbound and southbound slip lanes and an extra westbound lane, but the work along Great South Rd has traffic queuing for right-hand turns into Green Lane East.
A council combined committee meeting has approved an extra $11.5 million, but confirmation is needed next week from the transport and urban linkages committee.
That could still leave a $2.3 million shortfall, which may be bridged with contributions from utility companies and Land Transport NZ, although those cannot be guaranteed.
Any top-up from Land Transport will be at its board's discretion, and negotiations with utility companies have yet to begin.
But council transport planning group manager Alan Bufton said last night the new cost estimate included a generous allowance for any extra contingencies, and officers did not want to ask for any more council funding after that.
Transport general manager Stephen Rainbow said the area was a critical part of Auckland's roading network, at the junction of its main east-west and north-south corridors.
About 55,000 vehicles pass through the intersection daily, and the motorway interchange is thought to be the region's busiest.
Great South Rd was the main route between Auckland and Pukekohe for the best part of a century, and its age meant a paucity of information about some of the underground service lines laid along it.
Extra consultants have been added to the job, as had a "project ambassador" responsible for liaising with local businesses and others.
