3 month deadline on bridge walkway

Engineers have been given three months to produce a feasible plan for walking and cycling across the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Photo / Dean Purcell

Engineers are being given three months to produce a technically feasible plan for walking and cycling across the Auckland Harbour Bridge, or face more protests on the bridge.

The Auckland Council has agreed to chair a technical steering group comprising representatives of council organisations including Auckland Transport, the Transport Agency, and bridge crossing campaigners to reach a solution in that time.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown vowed on Tuesday to the council's transport committee - which supported participating in the group by eight votes to three - that "the world's most liveable city is certainly going to be the world's most walkable city".

"I can see no reason at all why the Transport Agency would stand in the way of progressing this project for appropriate assessment," he said of a proposal by the campaigners for a user-pays walking and cycling pathway to be strapped under the bridge's citybound clip-on structure.

The campaigners were infuriated by a two-paragraph response in March to a 79-page report from their structural engineers.

In it, the agency relayed consultants' advice that the clip-on girders would not be able to support the 4m-wide structure and dismissed their proposal as "infeasible".

Pathway project director Bevan Woodward wrote to the agency warning of a likelihood of monthly demonstrations on the bridge unless it showed a more "can-do" approach.

He reminded the councillors of a mass protest two years ago in which transport committee chairman Mike Lee joined about 2000 people who walked or cycled illegally across the bridge, disrupting traffic.

But agency regional director Stephen Town told the committee that it was willing to provide more detailed technical information to the new steering group.

Mr Town said the agency was also prepared to hire engineering consultancy Beca to work with the pathway scheme architects, Copeland and Associates, to produce "a feasible engineering solution should the one we already know not pass the feasibility test".

Although council staff estimated the scheme would cost about $20 million, Mr Woodward said $17 million would be enough for a "working solution", to be provided as a public private partnership with Orewa-based Hopper Developments and a funder it was lining up.

Even so, he acknowledged the proposal was likely to require "a degree of underwriting by the Government or Auckland Transport".

Mr Town also alarmed some councillors by saying that whatever emerged from the technical steering committee would not be eligible for Transport Agency funding.

North Shore council member George Wood said that since the agency controlled the harbour bridge, it should be taking responsibility.

"It seems to be opting out and putting our ratepayers at risk here."

But Mr Brown said the council's involvement with the technical group did not mean any financial commitment, and he commended the campaigners for proposing a self-funded project.