Mayors push for progress on highways

By BERNARD ORSMAN

Auckland mayors are pushing for an election-year package from the Government to get several big transport projects moving.

The mayoral forum is preparing a wishlist of projects and law changes to set up toll roads and fast-track resource consent procedures for a meeting with the Prime Minister and senior ministers in Wellington next month.

The wishlist is tilted towards roads, to reflect the resolve by Auckland Mayor John Banks to build a highway through the eastern corridor and complete the regional motorway network by 2007. Other highlighted projects include the upper harbour crossing and double-tracking the western rail line to Swanson.

Mayoral Forum chairman George Wood, the Mayor of North Shore, said the next few months were a make-or-break time for several projects in Auckland.

The forum had ideas for alternative cash and for speeding up the cumbersome process of the Resource Management Act, but the Government had only a limited time in election year to change the law, he said.

The Government is working on a far-reaching transport strategy estimated to cost $740 million over three years, including a 4c-a-litre petrol-tax rise and making it easier to set up toll roads.

The Government originally planned to introduce the tax rise in Parliament's final session before Christmas but opposition from the Greens to spending priorities in the package and fears of political damage from hitting holidaymakers over the summer break led to a postponement until February.

The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, acknowledged there was a bottleneck of roading projects in Auckland that required a lot of cash, including extra costs associated with environmental considerations.

"There are issues like State Highway 20 where there has been considerable resistance in my electorate [Mt Albert] to ploughing through the green belt in what is a pretty built-up suburb."

She said that raised the possibility of putting the motorway underground, which could lead in a toll direction.

"I have never objected to tolls where there is an alternative route of travel ... but the Government hasn't taken a position on that yet," Helen Clark said.

Mr Banks said he had detected a lot of goodwill from Helen Clark and the Labour-Alliance Government towards fixing Auckland's transport problems but he wanted to see legislation for toll roads on the books by the middle of the year to enable a privately built, financed and tolled eastern corridor.

"I have had three international groups through this office who are very keen to build motorways."

Mr Banks said he also wanted legislation to fast-track resource management procedures for the eastern corridor and State Highway 20 to avoid the planning delays that had dogged the Albany to Puhoi motorway.

A 1997 eastern corridor study said that a four-lane highway would benefit motorists the most but would cause the most harm to the environment.

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