Protesters vent fury at opening ceremony

Paul Davie protests at the opening of the SH20 extension through Mt Roskill. Photo / Martin Sykes

Chants of "homes, not roads" formed a backing track for the opening of a new Auckland motorway yesterday.

As Transport Minister Steven Joyce opened the $201 million motorway extension through Mt Roskill, about 20 members of communities in the path of the next and final link of Auckland's western ring route denounced the Government's backdown from building twin tunnels beneath Waterview.

Standing on a bridge at the 4.5km motorway's Dominion Rd interchange, some made their anger heard by guests gathered for speeches in a marque below.

Fourteen others breached security to reach the motorway itself from a traffic ramp, but stayed in an orderly line across the westbound carriageway, 200m from the official celebration.

After being faced off by police for about half an hour, and realising that buses carrying Mr Joyce and the rest of the Transport Agency's guests were using the eastbound carriageway to get past, they retired to the Dominion Rd bridge.

The motorway will carry traffic halfway across the Auckland isthmus from Hillsborough to New Windsor, where it ends on a roundabout junction with extensions to Maioro St to the northwest and Sandringham Rd to the east.

It is from there that the agency hopes to start building the Waterview motorway link by the end of 2011, after a controversial decision in principle for a combined surface-underground road costing $1.165 billion.

Eastbound lanes of the new road opened to traffic yesterday afternoon, and the westbound carriageway is due to open by Monday morning, weather permitting.

Mr Joyce said the Transport Agency's latest Waterview scheme ensured the completion of the ring route "in a way which tries to balance community concerns with a reasonable cost for the benefit of all New Zealanders".

Paul Davie, an Avondale Community Board member, said the scheme with its threatened loss of 365 homes was evidence of "a cheap Government trying to create a cheap community".