Legality of motorway toll queried

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Orewa business leaders yesterday demanded a toll-free motorway to Puhoi, questioning the legality of charging for what they regard as an extension to an existing road.

Tour operator and former Orewa Business Association chairman Peter Wilson told commissioners considering submissions on plans for a tolled road that Transit NZ had promised a motorway from Albany to Puhoi as a single, fully funded project.

Its plan to charge motorists $1.80c on the final 7.5km section from Orewa he called "a very mischievous manipulation" of the Land Transport Management Act, which allows tolls on new roads only.

"Alpurt B2 [Orewa to Puhoi] constitutes the completion of an existing project - even the name bears this out," he told a three-member panel headed by former Transit chairman Alan Bickers, who is described in consultation publicity as an independent party.

The other members of the panel, which Transit appointed to report to its board on the submissions before it seeks Government approval for a toll road, are the agency's strategy and traffic director Terry Brown and independent infrastructure consultant Derek McCoy.

Mr Wilson said Transit's new chief executive, Rick Barneveld, had told a public meeting in Orewa last year that the project had run out of money.

"For Transit to tell us it has to be completed by tolls, or not at all, is plain and simple political blackmail."

The panel did not challenge the submission, and Mr Brown did not want to comment outside the hearing.

Business association marketing coordinator Leanne Smith, whose organisation is now called Destination Orewa Beach, also recalled Transit's promise to complete the motorway "and never any mention of tolls".

Her organisation would tolerate tolls only as a last resort, to free traffic flows around the town.

It was concerned Transit wanted to retain the Hibiscus Coast Highway through the Orewa town centre to fulfil the new legislation's requirement for an alternative route to be available to motorists unwilling or unable to pay tolls.

Later, in a personal submission, she said the existing highway presented a threat to her family because of accidents outside her front gate and speeding trucks.

Cabra Holdings director Ian Boocock, whose company is developing a large subdivision next to the link road between the existing motorway and Orewa, said the alternative toll-free route did not meet legislative requirements as it was neither safe nor efficient.