KEY POINTS:
When it comes to a new harbour crossing, all roads do tend to keep coming back to a tunnel that duplicates the functions of the existing harbour bridge.
This was one of two "preferred options" identified in an October 2003 Transit New Zealand review, and it's the one National's Auckland spokesman, Wayne Mapp, and Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard are again pushing for.
They are echoing the wishes of the Regional Land Transport Committee which has made it clear to Transit a tunnel is the local councils' clear preferred option.
As far as linking in with the existing motorway system, it is indeed the obvious solution, with a portal at the old toll plaza site on the North Shore side and another in the Tank Farm adjacent to Fanshawe St on the city side. But there lies the dilemma. Is what is most obvious - and best for North Shore commuters - good enough reason to sacrifice this precious waterfront site to the internal combustion engine?
I raised this point two years ago when Dr Mapp tried to launch a "second harbour crossing by 2016" groundswell. A year later I rattled the cage again when Mayor Hubbard revealed his vision for the Tank Farm, which included "strategically located canals" and asked how this vision fitted in with the tunnel vision.
Last week Mr Hubbard was expressing his preference for a tunnel running to the east of the bridge, which sounds very much like Transit's proposed "toll plaza to Tank Farm" vision.
At the risk of revealing my lack of imagination, how can you have both? Surely a vision which includes both canals and a tunnel in close proximity is fraught with the risk of water ending up in the wrong place.
If ever there was a case study for Auckland dysfunction, it must be this parallel planning by Transit for a tunnel, alongside various family members of the Auckland Regional Council whanau working away at their people-place visions for the Tank Farm site.
A year ago, Transit staked its claim by asking Auckland City and Ports of Auckland - which was then leading the people-place visioning exercise - "to safeguard the option of landing the tunnel at Wynyard Point." (Wynyard Point is the official name for the Tank Farm.)
Undaunted, local and regional politicians and their bureaucrats continue to beaver way on their plans for a world-class, people-friendly redevelopment of this area, complete with open spaces, landmark public buildings, restaurants and apartments. Just how they plan to marry these two visions is difficult to imagine. It's as though they move from one planet to another, without realising they're really talking about the same place.
Of course Transit may have totally altered its plans over the last year or so, but the only information I have seen is of a tunnel emerging from the sea near the cement silos adjacent to Jellicoe St. This would be linked to access tunnels to Beaumont and Halsey Sts and to the central motorway junction.
Believe it or not, Jellicoe St is the planned entertainment strip of the other vision. The tunnel will require 20m to 30m tall ventilation shafts.
All in all, it sounds like a marriage forged in hell.
Even if we hadn't been seduced by stories of a world-class redevelopment of this prime waterfront site as a people place, flooding it full of vehicles with nowhere to go doesn't seem a very sensible move. Auckland City has just completed the widening of Fanshawe St to try to cope with existing bridge traffic. As for trying to access the increasingly popular Tank Farm area, all I say is: try it sometime. To put the mouth of a new North Shore tunnel into this bottleneck seems demented.
What would be more sensible would be to plan it as a public transit tunnel only. Ideally, it would be a light rail link underground all the way to Britomart Station. But having already spent millions of dollars on a dedicated bus system for the North Shore, an underground bus tunnel is a more likely solution. Presumably it would need to be only two lanes and therefore cheaper. It would also be much less intrusive.
For North Shore-ites, it would be the obvious way to get to and from the delights of Auckland's new throbbing entertainment heart.
The shame is, it's so eminently sensible it will never happen.
