Revised Roskill route signed off

Road-building bulldozers will soon be heard under the slopes of Mt Roskill, after the lead contract for the long-awaited Southwestern Motorway extension was signed yesterday.

But local MP Phil Goff says he is thrilled about a final design agreement between Transit New Zealand and the Volcanic Cones Society to protect the mountain's natural shape.

He said - as the contract for the $169 million project was signed between Transit and Christchurch-based construction firm Fulton Hogan - that Mt Roskill had been "knocked about" so much over the years that many local people had probably stopped noticing.

But the discovery of little-known legislation from 1915 aimed at protecting what remains of Auckland's volcanic heritage had led to a great improvement in the design of the motorway.

An earlier planned steep retaining wall above a motorway on-ramp from Dominion Rd has been replaced by a gradual contour which landscape architect Richard Reid, a cones society member hired as a consultant to Transit, says "brings the mountain down to the road".

Mr Goff acknowledged people would be inconvenienced while the project was being built but he believed Hillsborough residents would be highly relieved by the prospect of less traffic passing them.

He said it was about 15 years since the Southwestern Motorway was built as far as Hillsborough Rd, dumping traffic into streets.

"It was crazy having a motorway stopping in the middle of a residential area," he said.

Although the 4km motorway extension will stop in yet another residential area, Maioro St in New Windsor, Mr Goff said he hoped it would not be too much longer before it could continue through Avondale to join the Northwestern Motorway.

Transit expects to take until 2009 to build the Roskill extension, by which time it hopes to make a start on the $1.2 billion Avondale extension,