Editorial: Victoria Park road tunnel a daft idea

Everyone who takes the motorway in Auckland knows of the Victoria Park viaduct. It is especially well-known to southbound traffic because four lanes become two at the viaduct and the bottleneck often causes traffic to back up dangerously after coming off the Harbour Bridge. In fact, motorway users know the viaduct a great deal better than people in the park or on the surrounding streets these days because, from the ground, the old viaduct is now pleasantly lost among mature trees.

And if Transit New Zealand ever gets the go-ahead to add two lanes to the viaduct - a project which has been the most urgent and obvious motorway improvement for more than 20 years - the leafy glade will be more than ample to screen the the concrete structure from view. So why is the Auckland Regional Council steadfastly opposed to the widening of the viaduct and proposing a tunnel that would cost 2 1/2 times as much?

Last time we expressed this view an Auckland City Council member, Penny Sefuiva, replied that we were ignorant of the issues. "In an era of environmental sustainability and intensive growth, Transit NZ's cheapest option will not do," she wrote. "The ARC owes it to future generations and its Auckland City constituency to ensure that remaining green space is not squandered. Victoria Park is heavily used and valued for formal and informal recreation. It is coming under increasing pressure from residential redevelopment in the Viaduct, western reclamation and Freemans Bay areas. Many of the region's big roading projects will require appropriate environmental mitigation and we will need the funding to achieve this. We can no longer risk today's solutions being tomorrow's problem ... "

That is rhetoric, not reason. Councils must attend to roading as well as green space and they need to apportion public money sensibly between all the needs entrusted to them. There is not enough money in national roading accounts right now for all the improvements Transit has scheduled. Widening the Victoria Park viaduct is estimated to cost $105 million. To spend $280 million putting that stretch of road under the park cannot be justified unless the environment in that part of the city demands it.

Frankly, it does not. Victoria Park is a generous sward and the viaduct across one end of it is no longer a visual disaster, except possibly to those who buy into developments that overlook it. If so, they are moving in with their eyes open. Councils should quickly dispel this notion that people can buy homes in pleasant parts of the city and then expect public money to be laid out for the removal of a pre-existing blight on their landscape.

That message should also be given to the St Marys Bay group that wants to bury motorway noise in a tunnel at public expense. That indeed might be the real agenda behind the push to put the Victoria Park stretch underground. It is too easy for councils to endorse every demand on national or regional funds in the name of the environment or parochial loyalty. Needless public spending is false public service, because there are always more genuine needs waiting in line.

Transit NZ produced a long-overdue viaduct widening plan two years ago. Last July the ARC declared it wanted a tunnel instead. In November Transit said the cost was untenable. Now the ARC wants Transit to start seeking consents for the tunnel in the fond hope that it can be financed from new sources such as a regional petrol tax and congestion charges. That would be irresponsible in the extreme. The regional council must drop this daft distraction and get the Victoria Park bottleneck fixed without further delay.