KEY POINTS:
New roads, bridges, underpasses and bus lanes galore are ingredients of a $1.5 billion super-transport scheme to ease nightmare congestion and boost development around Auckland's Tamaki River.
Days will also be numbered for the notorious Panmure roundabout, subject to the scheme's approval in coming weeks by the Auckland and Manukau city councils and the regional transport authority.
Much of the roundabout traffic will be diverted along a new arterial route between a widened Mt Wellington Highway and Glen Innes, passing under the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and allowing the six-road roundabout to be collapsed into a four-road intersection controlled by traffic lights.
Planners hope a diversion of 30,000 vehicles a day - compared with 50,000 using the roundabout now - will open up the Panmure town centre to more intensive mixed-use development, and make it easier for residents to walk or cycle to the suburb's new railway station and bus interchange.
That will help to raise up to $200 million in development contributions towards Auckland City's expected $871 million share of the 15-year scheme. Manukau City's share will be around $600 million.
General traffic will also be restricted to one lane in each direction over Panmure Bridge, leaving the other lane for the 39 peak-time buses an hour proposed in the Auckland Regional Transport Authority's passenger transport network plan.
Motorists will be catered for by a duplicate bridge further south along the Pakuranga Motorway, allowing commuters from Howick a more direct route behind the Pakuranga town centre and along a viaduct over Ti Rakau Drive from Reeves Rd.
That should mean far less general traffic, and therefore better opportunities for mixed-use development, along the town centre's congested Pakuranga Rd frontage.
A duplicate bridge will also be built further east along Ti Rakau Drive, across Pakuranga Creek, making it easier for commuters from suburbs such as Glen Innes to get to East Tamaki's expanding industrial parks.
Although a key aim is to boost public transport use in a part of Auckland where it accounts for just half the regional average for commuter trips, or 4 per cent, those wedded to their cars will be offered better road connections and time savings.
Motorists travelling from Pakuranga to the Southern Motorway via the Southeastern Highway will enjoy a fully "grade-separated" route, after improvements to intersections with Waipuna Rd and Carbine Rd.
A separated intersection is proposed for Waipuna Rd, and local traffic along Carbine Rd will have to make a loop detour, taking it under the highway next to the new railway station being built at Sylvia Park.
The proposals are part of what planners call the Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative, which they began almost as soon as the controversial Eastern Motorway proposal was ditched in the fallout from the 2004 local body elections.
Although they are eager to distance it from that scheme, which involved a motorway through the middle of Hobson Bay, it retains some elements such as the separation of general commuter traffic from buses over the Tamaki River and a public transport hub at Panmure.
But the planners say the new proposal gives far more attention to encouraging public transport use, which they hope to boost to 13 per cent of commuter trips, and making the urban environment far more conducive for cycling and walking.
Auckland City transport general manager Stephen Rainbow says a "do minimum" approach would cause undue hardship to the thousands caught in traffic jams and put at risk about $3 billion of potential development around the Tamaki River.
His council is already under pressure from the Mt Wellington quarry suburb development, which will add 8000 new residents.
Although some local residents fear a road the developers are building through the quarry will draw more commuters, the city council is confident its own new linkages will take traffic off congested local routes.
They acknowledge the new road to Glen Innes will add some traffic to Kohimarama Rd, but say modelling has shown there will be fewer than 1000 extra vehicles a day.
Dr Rainbow said a longer-term objective was to extend bus lanes all the way down the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Great South Rd to the $47 million busway the council is planning from Newmarket to Britomart.
Auckland City has earmarked $800 million in its long-term planning for the scheme, towards which it hopes to raise more than $400 million from Land Transport NZ, $200 million from developers, $100 million from tolls, and $100 million from ratepayers.
But although Dr Rainbow said Manukau City representatives on the scheme's political steering group were "strongly supportive" of it, that council's transport committee voted against imposing tolls on a duplicate Tamaki River crossing.
Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis said on Friday that his strong preference was for a regional petrol tax.
