Bridge backers welcome Westhaven plan

Jacob's Ladder foot bridge. Photo / Greg Bowker

Campaigners for a pathway across Auckland Harbour Bridge are welcoming council approval of a $10 million waterfront cycling and walking promenade through Westhaven.

Waterfront Auckland said yesterday it had won council approval for a 2.5km link between the bridge and its newly developed Jellicoe boulevard in Wynyard Quarter.

That will be part of a walking and cycling route to Tamaki Drive, much of which has already been established.

It will also provide a connection to a future toll pathway across the bridge.

The project has been flagged for completion by 2014.

According to the master-plan, a walking and cycling promenade through Westhaven will also connect "the proposed Auckland Harbour Bridge pathway" to Wynyard Quarter and on to regional and national cycling networks.

These are expected to include an extension by the Transport Agency to the Northwestern Cycleway, through Spaghetti Junction and Grafton Gully to the waterfront.

Plans for this are to be announced tomorrow.

Despite the waterfront agency's reference to a bridge pathway, that project has made it into Auckland Council's 10-year funding plan only by the skin of its teeth, as a "zero budget" item.

Even so, a trust promoting what has been renamed the SkyPath is happy that this clears the way for it to keep working with council and Auckland Transport officers towards starting construction of a tolled link as early as next year.

Spokesman Bevan Woodward said there were plenty of investors who would be prepared to pay for a pathway under the bridge's citybound clip-on for $29 million if any financial risk could be mitigated by a partial under-writing commitment from the council.

He said the Westhaven project would add considerable momentum to the push for cyclists and pedestrians to cross Auckland's signature bridge.