Dialogue: Hokianga's harbour bridge plans gather momentum

By TONY GEE

Bridging the Hokianga Harbour is likely to come a step nearer this month when engineering consultants start work on a second investigative stage aimed at linking isolated North Hokianga with the slightly more populous south.

The idea of a bridge, or bridges, across the harbour, which divides the two Hokianga regions into distinct geographical areas, has been around for a long time. For years, however, it has been placed in the local authority's too-hard basket.

But now the Far North District Council is on the move.

The project appears in the council's strategic plan - a blueprint for the future of the district.

That's no guarantee a bridge or bridges, with associated roading support, will soon be built, but it's a promising start to what, by Far North standards, will be a huge project.

A report on an initial bridging feasibility study, undertaken a year or so ago by consultants, put forward a two-bridge scenario, linked by a new arterial road, for a route running from The Narrows on the harbour's northern side into the streets of Rawene on the south.

One bridge would traverse 240 or so metres of waterway across The Narrows near Kohukohu, but a bridge may have to be longer if it were taken into the eastern side to align more closely with approach roading.

A new arterial road would have to be built to connect this bridge with another new 400m bridge and linking causeway across the Waima River, much of which is tidal mud, before the route entered Rawene.

An estimated all-up cost of about $22 million, which included the southside causeway, new roading, toll gates and associated equipment, had critics saying the scheme could never be financially viable, even with toll charges and a likely 60 per cent ($13 million) funding subsidy from Transfund.

One district councillor said the project would take decades and the terms of many future councils to pay off.

Ratepayers throughout the district could be saddled for years with debt repayments resulting from council borrowing for the crossing.

Bridge tolls set at suggested low charges of $5 a car and $15 a truck or heavy vehicle, with no charge for passengers, are much cheaper than present fares on the existing, council-owned vehicular and passenger ferry, Kohu Ra Tuarua, which sails regular services between Rawene and The Narrows.

But without big traffic volumes using the bridge crossing after the ferry's assumed demise, there would never be enough toll revenue to pay off any funding shortfall, critics argue.

This would leave the council and ratepayers exposed to ongoing expense.

A long-time bridging supporter, district councillor Joe Carr, points, however, to a forecast 80 heavy truck movements a day by 2004 from forestry alone on North Hokianga roads.

Add another 20-odd heavy trucks carting aggregate and metal for the district's mainly poor roads, and you have 100 heavy trucks a day trundling through tiny townships like Kohukohu.

There would also be benefits for locals from increased volumes of tourist traffic using a bridge crossing, including campervans.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some campervans are deterred from using the present ferry service because of the cost - much more than the suggested $5 car rate each vehicle would be charged at a bridge toll gate.

While debate simmers on the financial viability of the ambitious project, there's little argument about the medical, health and social benefits an all-weather, 24-hour, seven-days-a-week bridge crossing would bring to communities on both sides of the harbour.

Accidents and health emergencies seem never to coincide with ferry sailing hours.

Stage two of the proposed crossing investigation, for which engineering consultancy bids closed last Friday, will look at geotechnical details and is expected to produce final project costings within a reasonable degree of certainty.

It will also identify any important archaeological and sacred sites along the proposed route.

If the critical geotechnical detail and money issues stack up, and with majority community support, there seems little reason the council cannot offer a green light later this year for building to start in 2004.

Five years is being touted as a likely construction period, but gritty political will within Hokianga and inside the Far North district to see the scheme succeed, could reduce that period considerably.