KEY POINTS:
Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard has vowed to fight "absolutely tooth and nail" for a $320 million northbound motorway tunnel under Victoria Park, despite a claim by a ministerial advisory group that its cost is unjustified.
The four-member group, which the Government appointed a year ago in the face of ballooning road-building costs, has criticised plans by Transit NZ to use tunnels to soften the impacts of motorway projects through central Auckland and a bushclad hill between Waiwera and Orewa. But Mr Hubbard said Aucklanders would not allow the cheaper option of a second unsightly viaduct across such rare and precious green space as Victoria Park and neither would he.
"I'll be fighting absolutely tooth and nail - it would be a tragedy for Auckland if it [the tunnel plan] is undone," he said yesterday.
The importance of the park would grow as residential development intensified in the area around it, including the Tank Farm precinct, and one of his first big efforts after winning the mayoralty late in 2004 had been to convince Transit to dig a tunnel.
A report issued by Transport Minister Annette King last week from the ministerial group, chaired by former construction firm head Clive Tilby and including former Auckland Regional Council chief executive Jo Brosnahan, questioned the cost of environment benefits from digging a one-way tunnel while retaining the existing 1960s-era viaduct.
"Analysis indicates that significant improvement will only occur if all traffic is moved underground," the report said.
But it noted there was no plan to replace the existing viaduct, which will be retained for an indefinite period for southbound traffic.
The group said that although Government funding agency Land Transport NZ had so far committed only design money for Transit's plan to dig under Victoria Park and widen the existing above-ground motorway between there and the harbour bridge, "it is the general understanding of Aucklanders that a tunnel will be constructed. It would be difficult for Land Transport NZ to resile from this position."
