Widening 15th Ave and improving the intersection with Fraser St look set to become the first projects to benefit from the new Government's $100 million commitment to Tauranga's central corridor project.
The project to build an underpass linking Welcome Bay Rd to Turret Rd causeway and four-laning Turret Rd and 15th Ave to Fraser St has just been named as one of three new national priorities by the New Zealand Transport Agency.
A meeting this week of Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby's transportation taskforce unveiled the close involvement council will have in the project.
The project steering group will comprise representatives from council and the agency, with roading engineer John Hannah, who has just left the agency to become a consultant, expected to play a pivotal role in the project.
City transportation manager Hennie Roux told Tuesday's taskforce meeting that he expected the easy bits would get done first while planning advanced simultaneously on the rest of the central corridor.
The hardest bit was expected to be widening Turret Rd to four lanes because it was in a constricted roadway between houses and the pohutukawa-lined foreshore.
Mr Roux said the first option for widening would be taking the frontage off the houses along Turret Rd. Simple four-laning would require taking between three-quarters of a metre and 1.2 metre off the frontages, but this did not allow for sustainable transport planning initiatives like cycleways.
If widening along the house side was not feasible, they would then look at building lanes out into the estuary so the trees formed a central median.
But Mr Roux expected a lot of public opposition to the estuary option.
``We should try to stay in the road reserve as much as possible. The old emphasis on traffic demand management has been put on hold in order to redirect the focus on to 15th Ave road widening and improvements to the Fraser St intersection.
Cr Hayden Evans said a five to eight-year timeframe for construction of the central corridor project was a bit outrageous.
But engineers were unable to give him an assurances that it would be done earlier. Mr Roux said progress would be made as soon as possible on resource consent applications, including widening the bridge.
Cr David Stewart said the new Government's review of the Resource Management Act might allow the project to be sped up.
Mayor Stuart Crosby assured a doubter at the meeting that Mr Hannah would have his foot on the accelerator to make sure things happened as soon as possible.
Updated estimates have calculated the Turret Rd end of the project will cost $53 million and the underpass from Welcome Bay $48 million.
Tauranga project in National priorities
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