Council grabs $1b highway option

Auckland City Council voted last night for a $1.15 billion motorway extension through Waterview after being warned a longer route up the Rosebank Peninsula was unaffordable.

One councillor, Glenda Fryer, accused Transit NZ of holding a gun to the city's head by announcing to a closed workshop yesterday afternoon that there would either be a Waterview route or no route at all.

The council voted 16-3 to support in principle the Waterview option, subject to mitigation measures including a high degree of cut-and-cover tunnelling and minimising the impact on bush-clad Oakley Creek.

That could be at the cost of demolishing a row of houses to allow Great North Rd to be moved west to make more room for the motorway, in addition to the destruction of about 300 homes elsewhere such as along Hendon Ave in Mt Albert.

Ms Fryer said deciding on the route before consulting community boards on changes to an earlier proposal, and without having allowed the city's transport committee to grapple with these, was like "getting married before we sign the pre-nuptials".

But the leader of the minority Citizens & Ratepayers Now council team, Scott Milne, said the city should seize the Government's offer of $1 billion of infrastructure before it disappeared, given a desperate need to complete a western ring route around Auckland.

Deputy Mayor Bruce Hucker opposed an amendment put by fellow City Vision/Labour team member Leila Boyle to delay a decision until March to allow community consultation, saying Transit had to firm up the motorway option by January to catch next year's budget round.

He said the boards of both Transit and Government funding agency Land Transport NZ had voted to link State Highway 20 to the Northwestern Motorway via Waterview. The alternative Rosebank option would cost $300 million to $400 million more.

Mayor Dick Hubbard said it appeared Government funding available for transport had tightened significantly since the election and it was crucial for Auckland to have a western bypass to remove its dependency on the harbour bridge.

He denied suggestions in the Herald that he was pushing for the 5km motorway extension to be finished in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, four years earlier than Transit's target.

Although the Auckland Business Forum is lobbying for an early start to the project to get the region "into shape" for hosting that event, he has simply said he would like to think it could be finished before 2015.

The mayor also sought last night to calm local concerns by proposing that the council conduct thorough consultations with affected communities to develop more mitigation measures as a condition of its support for the Waterview route.