Bring back bridge tolls, company says

By Dean Austen

AUCKLAND - One of the biggest construction companies in the country wants tolls brought back on the Auckland Harbour Bridge to pay for a second crossing.

Mainzeal yesterday told the joint hearing into regional transport and growth plans that a $2 toll on both the existing bridge and a new one built alongside it would pay for the second crossing in around 20 years.

It gave details of its plan, unveiled last December, for a second bridge that would connect via tunnels on the southern side to the Mangere motorway.

Mainzeal business development manager Bruce Connor said the $835 million proposal could be paid for with electronic tolls.

The suggestion echoed a call by North Shore mayor George Wood in March for charges for peak-time use of the present harbour bridge to encourage the use of public transport.

North Shore City's representative at yesterday's hearing, Julia Parfitt, predicted that residents would be far from excited at paying tolls again on a bridge they had already paid for.

But Mr Connor said tolls were the only way of paying for a new bridge if it were to be financed privately. Electronic toll-charging had recently been introduced in a roading project in Melbourne, and while there was initial protest, "people learned to live with it and got very excited about it."

Motorists would buy a computer chip with a number of trips stored on it which would be installed into their vehicle. Out-of-town motorists could use the bridges without the chips, but would be billed through the mail later.

Under the company's proposal, a four-lane bridge would replicate the shape of the present bridge, exiting into a tunnel on the southern side running under Herne Bay. Two more short tunnels, under Westmere and Pt Chevalier and emerging above ground at Western Springs and Coxs Bay Park, would leave the suburbs intact and have minimal impact on the environment, said Mr Connor.

The company wanted the Government to designate the land to avoid the Resource Management Act.

Outside the hearing, Elisabeth Radford, from the Grey Lynn-Westmere Community Committee, said Mainzeal's proposal would leave a terrible toll on the environment, ruin valuable public space and disrupt thousands of lives.

Representatives of the road transport industry told the hearing that completion of an efficient roading system had to be a priority.