KEY POINTS:
Residents of the Waitakere City suburb of Massey are to get a pedestrian bridge across a section of motorway where a 12-year-old boy was killed by a van four years ago.
The Transport Agency last night announced its agreement to the bridge near the end of the Northwestern Motorway, with the help of local financial contributions.
Acting regional manager Tommy Parker said a budget and construction timetable had yet to be determined, pending likely contributions from Waitakere City Council and the Westgate shopping centre, but the bridge was expected to cost around $2.5 million.
His agency had asked contractors for the nearby $220 million Hobsonville motorway bypass project to submit a construction price quote to include potential savings from economies of scale.
The announcement comes as Transport Minister Annette King is about to turn the first sod this morning on the 6km Hobsonville motorway section to be built over the next four years between Upper Harbour Bridge and Westgate, as well as a 3km northern extension of the Northwestern Motorway as a two-lane road.
Massey councillor Linda Cooper said too many locals were illegally crossing the motorway rather than walking the 300m or so to Hobsonville Rd and then a similar distance to Westgate.
Transport Agency cameras showed in May an average of 28 people were crossing the motorway in the vicinity each weekday and 48 on Saturdays, which was how West Harbour Primary School student Guile Jackson died on his way home at night in October 2004. Coroner Murray Jamieson called in 2005 for a pedestrian bridge to be built.
