Drivers without passengers face fast lane tolls

Drivers may have to pay tolls to join the fast lanes on costly new Auckland motorways - or earn free use by carrying at least two passengers.

Transit New Zealand expects to have to borrow money to accelerate construction of missing links in its long-awaited western ring route around Auckland, from Manukau to Albany, and says it will seriously consider introducing tolls.

Although $500 million of construction work on the route is already being done or is due to start in spring and summer, Transit will have to raise another $1.6 billion to complete it by about 2015 as a viable alternative to the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

Chief executive Rick van Barneveld said there would still be toll-free lanes on a $193 million bypass of Hobsonville and a $1.2 billion extension of State Highway 20 from Mt Roskill through Avondale to join the Northwestern Motorway.

He said reserving fast lanes for high-occupancy vehicles or those whose drivers were willing to pay would help to limit congestion by "managing" demand for travel, a legal obligation for road-builders.

These will also be investigated for a $190 million duplicate Mangere bridge, and on State Highway 1 for a northbound tunnel under Victoria Park in central Auckland, for which the estimated cost has ballooned to $370 million from an earlier indication of about $200 million.

The Land Transport Management Act allows a toll road to be built only if it has strong local support and an alternative free route is available.

Transit expects to sign a contract this month for a 4km motorway extension from Hillsborough to New Windsor. It has been unwilling until now to commit itself to a start date for carrying on through Avondale to join the Northwestern at Waterview or the Rosebank Peninsula.

A date for the Hobsonville bypass was also in doubt because of funding, even though a duplicate bridge across the upper Waitemata Harbour and a motorway stretch through Greenhithe to Albany are already under construction.

But Mr van Barneveld said Transit now viewed an extra $500 million tax windfall the Government intends allocating to transport as a seed funding base from which to borrow extra money for early starts on these projects and another Mangere motorway bridge.

His organisation's 10-year state highway forecast, which it unveiled last week in expectation of receiving $11 billion of an overall Government transport fund of more than $21 billion, nominates 2007 as a construction start date for Hobsonville and 2009 for Avondale.

Transit chairman David Stubbs said the Avondale link would be the biggest and most important road job since the Harbour Bridge was built in 1959 and "the last, most-costly link in the chain of projects that will form the western ring route".

As well as linking Manukau to North Shore through the upper harbour, it would provide a high-speed link between the airport and central Auckland.

"It is great to at last put a construction date on it - enabled by tolling and borrowing proposals cleared by the Government."

Although Transit does not yet have a designated corridor for Avondale, and expects planning difficulties, Mr van Barneveld said a proposed change to the Resource Management Act to allow projects to be referred directly to the Environmental Court would help.

He denied that bypassing planning commissioners would remove Transit's accountability to local communities.

Mr van Barneveld also flagged the possibility of yet another motorway connection, to the western ring route at Onehunga from the high-growth area of Botany Downs near Howick, as an alternative to the eastern highway rejected by Auckland City Council across Hobson Bay.

But Mr Stubbs said Transit would also give priority to Waikato Expressway projects in considering uses for the extra $500 million.

Council for Infrastructure Development chief executive Stephen Selwood fears the four-lane expressway from Mercer to Cambridge will otherwise take until 2020 to finish under a two-year delay in Transit's latest forecast.

He is also alarmed at delays to bypasses of dangerous stretches of State Highway 2 through Maramarua and to a $95 million loop around Te Rapa on Hamilton's northern approach, on which Transit has put back the start date by four years to 2012.