Brian Rudman: The great car, bus and train race

COMMENT

We now have the favoured route for the Eastern Transport Corridor, except for the tricky part at the city end, and an updated stab at how much it's going to cost you and me: somewhere between $2.8 billion and $3.9 billion.

What was missing from yesterday's briefing was any indication of how we are going to pay for it.

Consultants Opus International also avoided the great debate over which transport mode should be adopted by incorporating all three - roads, rail and busways.

The result is a corridor that, for much of its length, will look like the old New Zealand Railways travel poster that had a train, bus and car racing each other into the sunset. Great to look at, perhaps, but a rather wasteful triplication of ways to get to town.

Auckland city councillor Greg McKeown, chairman of the eastern transport corridor steering group, told yesterday's press conference that "We shouldn't be frightened by the numbers", which I took to be a clue to how frightened everybody really was.

Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis and Auckland Mayor John Banks were equally upbeat, Sir Barry enthusing, once again, about the wonders of road tolling in Oslo and Mr Banks arguing that $3 billion was the equivalent of social welfare spending in Auckland for only 30 months.

Just what the latter had to do with anything, I'm not sure. Perhaps it will all come clear on March 17 when another consulting firm, Deloittes, presents its report on funding options.

That's when the mayors and road lobbyists will have to come back to earth and get serious.

As project director Grant Kirby pointed out in a report this month to the steering group, "the project parties will", after reading the Deloittes report, "carefully need to consider their financial liabilities and means of funding all or parts of the project before they commit to proceed with statutory processes".

On a sobering note, he adds that in his view the Government's pre-Christmas transport package, which plans to inject an extra $1.62 billion into Auckland transport over the next decade, "will not give the funding certainty needed to ensure that the project can be constructed within anticipated time frames.

"This means that an important part of the steering group's future consideration of this project should relate to the possibility of staging parts of it."

Two years ago the project was to cost $460 million. By last September it was $2.9 billion. Now, the worst-case scenario has it knocking $3.9 billion.

Doubtlessly expecting negative reaction, the ratepayer-funded pro-roads lobbyist who is based in Mr Banks office, Tony Garnier, was drumming up support for the Opus report well before its release yesterday.

In a February 26 email to business leaders, Mr Garnier said: "Both mayors are totally focused on carrying through their respective pledges at the last local government election to 'champion' the eastern corridor.

"Your support will be needed in respect of taking this matter forward. You may wish to consider arranging to make an appropriate public response on the day details are announced ... and take up other opportunities to encourage the decision-makers of the two cities to stay focused in coming weeks and months."

No doubt all the usual suspects will leap, like Pavlov's dogs, to this command. They'll even have the Business and Economic Research (Berl) report on the corridor's economic benefits to wave about as well. This report predicts the corridor will create economic growth in Glen Innes and Panmure worth $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

After a quick read, what neither it nor the Opus report does is examine the potential economic benefits of an eastern corridor dominated by public transport rather than private motor vehicles.

For $1.5 billion, for example, the whole of the existing rail network across Auckland could be electrified and otherwise modernised. Where is the Berl report on the economic benefits to the region of a modern, efficient, public transport system?

There are glimpses, however, in the reports of the social and environmental catastrophe the planned new roads will cause: 1269 properties "affected" by the Parnell option, 1271 if the Hobson Bay route is chosen. A further 369 residential properties will suffer around Te Rakau/Te Irirangi Drive.

There was talk yesterday of building the corridor in stages, meaning a road bridge here, a highway there. How much wiser it might be to think smart and start with the rail stage first, followed by a feeder bus service, and give the road stage a miss all together.