Whangaparaoa gets ray of highway hope

Annette King

Transport Minister Annette King has offered a ray of hope on a long-awaited toll road to the busy Whangaparaoa Peninsula.

The minister said after a road and helicopter tour of Rodney District yesterday that she was waiting for the district council to make a firm case for the road to be built as a public-private partnership.

Such an arrangement would have to stack up on financial and other grounds before she could decide whether to seek Cabinet support.

The Rodney council says it has spent more than $24 million buying land for the Penlink proposal, which would run from the Northern Motorway at Redvale to the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, over a bridge yet to be built across the Weiti River.

But the council last year backed off seeking Cabinet backing after Transit New Zealand said it could not support the $150 million-plus project as a state highway.

Rodney Mayor John Law said last night that the council was still seeking state highway status for the road, but was delighted that the Government would consider supporting it as a public-private partnership, which was potentially eligible for a Land Transport NZ subsidy.

The council was talking to several potential private partners, and once it had firmed up a proposal it would seek a 58 per cent Government subsidy.

That would leave the private partner to raise the balance, which it would then recover through a toll, to be no more than $2.

Mr Law said the council also wanted the Government to underwrite depreciation of the asset, meaning a potentially shorter toll period than the 35 years it would otherwise take to pay for the road.

He said that although Whangaparaoa's population was still 3000 below the 30,000 threshold needed to qualify for a state highway, it would take only a few more years to reach that figure.

Congestion would meanwhile worsen on the existing route from the Northern Motorway to the peninsula via the Hibiscus Coast Highway.