Don't decide on motorway yet, plea to council

Thilak Jayawickrama with his house overlooking Oakley Creek. Picture / Greg Bowker

Pressure is building on the Auckland City Council to defer a crucial decision tonight on a route for the $1 billion-plus Avondale motorway extension.

Although Mayor Dick Hubbard and Deputy Mayor Bruce Hucker want a decision before Christmas, some councillors in the ruling City Vision-Labour team are upset the council's transport committee and three affected community boards have been bypassed in the rush.

Ructions are emerging around an amendment proposed by Labour councillor Leila Boyle that the council put off a decision until March for feedback from the Avondale, Eden-Albert and Western Bays communities on recent changes to a proposed 5km route through Waterview.

Transit NZ, which strongly favours the Waterview route to the Northwestern Motorway over a longer and costlier scheme along Rosebank Peninsula, is pushing the council for an early decision so it can prepare to start building the new road in 2009 and complete it by 2015.

But it admits that even if construction could start today, without having to buy about 300 properties for demolition and line up resource consents, it could not finish the job in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup - as urged by Mr Hubbard and the Auckland Business Forum.

City officers are recommending that the council back the Waterview route, which would cost $1.15 billion, compared with an expected $1.55 billion for Rosebank, a 2.5km-longer proposition.

They argue that although both options present difficulties in "retrofitting major infrastructure into the urban environment", there is likely to be much more money available for mitigation work if Waterview is chosen.

This includes "cut and cover" tunnelling along much of the route, and moving the motorway alignment as far back from Oakley Creek as possible.

Acting transport planning group manager Allen Bufton said last night that the idea was to move Great North Rd further west to make more room for the project, rather than to run the motorway along the opposite side of that road, as suggested in a staff report.

But although a tunnel rather than open motorway is proposed along the creek between the southern side of New North Rd and beyond the Phyllis St Reserve, critics fear a roundabout interchange in the reserve will degrade a precious green belt.

They are also upset the motorway will run along the surface of much of the 2km-long Alan Wood Reserve south of New North Rd, which Transit says is a flood plain too difficult to tunnel through.

Ms Boyle could not be reached to comment on an email she sent yesterday to fellow members of the council majority, asking what difference a couple of months' delay would have on a project likely to take a decade to complete at considerable cost to affected communities.

"I feel we are leaving the community behind," she wrote.

Dr Hucker said he remained hopeful of a decision tonight as Transit had consulted councillors extensively, and some of them sat on community boards.

Whichever route is chosen, the house Sri Lankan-born Thilak Jayawickrama bought last year overlooking a tranquil Oakley Creek is considered likely to be bulldozed, although he is confident that Transit will treat him fairly.

"You feel sorry for the environment but what is there to do?" he said.

"We have to have motorways for the economy - if Transit want it, that's it, as long as they give us a fair price."

- Additional reporting Bernard Orsman