Second Auckland harbour crossing: Will it finally happen? - The Front Page

Auckland Harbour Bridge - what will the second connection look like? Photo / Michael Craig

The long-running discussion about a second Auckland Harbour crossing is back.

The Government has announced consultancy work to determine the business case for making the changes to the infrastructure.

North Shore Auckland Councillor and former Planning Committee chair Chris Darby tells The Front Page podcast this move has been a long time coming.

“We’ve been talking about an additional Harbour crossing, not for years but decades, going back to a different century, in fact,” Darby says.

“We’re at the point where we’ve got a committed Minister and committed Government that actually wants us to develop a business case and find evidence for the form, timing, the route and the mode mix for an additional harbour crossing.”

This is a milestone in the process, but there is still a long way to go before anything is actually signed off and construction starts.

It also comes at a time when politicians might be hesitant to green-light major projects given the severe public criticism that has been pointed at other infrastructure projects.

The steady stream of frustration surrounding both Transmission Gully and the Auckland City Rail link provides a reminder that politicians have to be willing to upset a few people if they want to get major projects done.

The level of disruption and the enormous amount of money involved in these projects can become ongoing talking points that politicians don’t necessarily want to focus on.

Despite this, Darby says the onus is on political leaders to look beyond what is happening right now.

“There’s been a disease in New Zealand,” he says.

“We have taken our eye off the future, not just in Auckland, but the nation, in some areas, and particularly in infrastructure. We’re always looking at what we should have been doing years ago. The City Rail Link is a classic example of that. It was first suggested in 1924, and it will be 100 years between the first thinking and actually riding it.”

Darby says that committing to these projects protects future generations from having to foot the bill to fix the problems that have been neglected for too long.

“We always need to be looking ahead as well as finishing off what’s ahead of us today … You can’t just throw up your hands and say: ‘This is blowing out in price, I don’t want a bar of it.’

“Otherwise, you are just giving a mortgage to future generations to take care of it when it should have been taken care of by this generation.”

But is there any realistic hope of a second harbour crossing coming to fruition? Will a National government be as eager as the one we currently have? Is there enough consensus at a council level? And can the New Zealand building sector even be trusted to deliver this on time and on budget?

Listen to The Front Page podcast to hear Darby dissect what goes into building a city.