Historic pub to move over for tunnel

Herald graphic

Auckland's 19th-century Birdcage Tavern, 86 trees and more than 100 church carparks are likely to have to make way for the $320 million Victoria Park motorway tunnel. But Transit NZ, at public hearings which opened yesterday in Auckland, signalled its intention to move and preserve the Birdcage - minus its basement.

It also undertook to consider transplanting four early-1900s London Plane trees in its reinstatement of Victoria Park after construction of a 460m "cut and cover" tunnel.

The imposing brick and plaster Birdcage would be hauled on skids to a new site about 30m up Franklin Rd, subject to an authority which Transit is seeking from the Historic Places Trust.

Other details such as how long the beer taps will have to be shut were unclear last night.

Apart from the basement, which faces demolition despite once housing kitchens and servants' quarters, the remaining two-storey hotel is likely to end up as close to the motorway as it now stands.

But instead of being just three metres from motorway traffic running along the viaduct above Victoria Park, patrons could expect to look down on vehicles disappearing through the one-way northbound tunnel's southern portal.

Transit is opposing a request from at least one of about 45 submissions for the portal to be redesigned to allow the Birdcage to stay intact, but project manager Andrew Fleming said Transit had listened to local concerns in altering the alignment slightly to preserve one of two London Plane trees standing on the corner of Victoria St and Franklin Rd.

Transit meanwhile remains in compensation negotiations with land-owners such as the Victory Christian Church on the corner of Beaumont and Fanshawe streets, which stands to lose about 120 of its 350 or so carparks and an administration building, to make way for a reconfigured motorway on-ramp running over the other end of the tunnel.

The agency is also promising a seven-member panel of Auckland City and ARC commissioners to erect a transparent sound-wall varying from 2m to 5m high all the way along the landward side of the 1.4km stretch of motorway it wants to widen between the tunnel and the Harbour Bridge.

Other features of the three-year project, which Transit would begin in 2009, subject to gaining resource consents and altered land designations, would include a footbridge over the motorway to the waterfront just west of Beaumont St and a walkway through St Mary's Bay Reserve to Erin Point.

The tunnel is being proposed as an alternative to widening Victoria Park's 1960s-era concrete viaduct to ease one of the country's worst traffic bottlenecks, but for about twice the cost.

Transit intends retaining the viaduct for 20 to 30 more years, using both its two-lane carriages for southbound traffic.

The left-hand lanes will carry traffic to the Cook St off-ramp and to new links with the port and the Northwestern Motorway, leaving the other two lanes for vehicles heading further south.

Transit regional transportation manager Tommy Parker told the hearings panel at Auckland Town Hall that the tunnel provided better long-term environmental sustainability but was equal to a widened viaduct in traffic efficiency terms.

Not improving the corridor would keep congestion worsening with serious economic and social consequences.

Senior planning consultant Mike Foster said that without widening the motorway between Shelley Beach Rd and Wellington St, the Harbour Bridge's operational capacity of 10,500 vehicles an hour would never be realised.

Improvements to Spaghetti Junction and Grafton Gully, worth $240 million, would otherwise be "wasted".