The Auckland Harbour Bridge turns 67 this month, and the need for the city to have a second harbour crossing is becoming even more glaringly obvious.
In-depth assessments on the bridge’s condition over the years have shaped the long-term maintenance programme currently in place.
But the need to intensify efforts is nigh. As the bridge continues to age, it requires more frequent and complex maintenance to keep it safe.
In other words, the can cannot be kicked down the road any longer.
Documents reveal many areas of the bridge are vulnerable and increasingly fraying under use, with annual maintenance and repair costs now surpassing $25 million.
Essentially, the Auckland Harbour Bridge will, in the coming decade, require more significant, costly and complex rehabilitations, and that’ll mean restrictions on use, more closures, truck limits, and other disruptions.
The Waitematā Harbour Connections project’s job is to investigate options for the future, from what new infrastructure is needed to how to make the best use of what we already have.
At the moment, the New Zealand Transport Agency/Waka Kotahi (NZTA) is progressing geotechnical, environmental and utilities investigations, along with refining the scope of the crossing.
Most anticipated, though, is the development of a more detailed idea of what a second harbour crossing could look like.
A decision on a tunnel or another bridge is due by the middle of this year.
University of Auckland senior lecturer in urban planning Dr Timothy Welch told The Front Page that Auckland had been discussing another crossing for decades, with many of the same ideas resurfacing again and again.
“If we look at the traffic today, we know that 50% of people crossing the bridge during commute hours are on a bus. So that’s really taken up a significant amount of the demand.
“Since we’re only considering cars as an option across that bridge, some of the other things that you would hope to see in this bigger study about light rail as a potential, or better bus lanes, or walking or cycling, all those things will be gone.
“This is gonna be mostly constrained to just ‘How is vehicle traffic going to be impacted?’, which is a limited story when we talk about connecting the city to the North Shore.”
Welch said Auckland was at risk of repeating the same mistakes made when the bridge was first built.
“The original bridge was going to be essentially twice the size with footpaths on both sides and, because of austerity, that number was cut down, and we ended up with the kind of smaller bridge we had, and then, within a couple of years, traffic exceeded about 10 times the projections, so we added on the clip-ons that we have now.
“We’ve been paying the interest on that cheaper build ever since, for 70 years almost. It’s something that, if we do it again, we’re locking ourselves into decades more wishing we had done something different.”
It’s not the first time Aucklanders have waited with bated breath for a final decision on this never-ending saga.
In 2023, Chris Hipkins’ Labour Government announced that a second Waitematā harbour crossing would begin in 2029 as it unveiled five options: tunnels, bridges or a combination of both.
Michael Wood, then the Transport Minister, announced that the new crossing would connect to the ambitious Auckland Light Rail in the city centre.
Whatever the preferred choice, it would become the most expensive infrastructure project in New Zealand history.
This wouldn’t come to pass. The light rail project would be cancelled in early 2024 within the National-led coalition Government’s first 100 days.
Eight months after Hipkins and Wood had gushed that “the second harbour crossing has just become real”, the dream was over, and Auckland was back to square one.
Fast forward to 2026, and Transport Minister Chris Bishop has said a final ruling is in sight.
“We’re planning on making a decision mid this year, so the next few months, in terms of the options for basically a bridge versus a tunnel,” Bishop told Ryan Bridge TODAY on Tuesday.
Once finalised, the decision will go to the NZTA board before landing with the Cabinet for approval.
But as the “single biggest infrastructure project New Zealand’s ever built”, Bishop stressed that, whatever the decision, it would require bipartisan support to give certainty over the city’s transport future.
Meanwhile, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has long advocated for a bridge over Meola Reef, a partially submerged rocky lava flow extending into the water from Point Chevalier, arguing that doing so would be cheaper and more logical.
Bishop has said that option is “not currently on the table”.
“We’re one of the parties, and this is my city. I understand bridges better than professors of bridges,” Brown said.
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The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting, who joined NZME in 2016.
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