KEY POINTS:
Takapuna residents are promising North Shore Mayor George Wood a roasting at the local body elections over his refusal to rule out building a transport causeway through a mangrove estuary in upper Shoal Bay.
"He's riding roughshod over his citizens - he's not listening," Byron Ave householder Sandra
Allen said last night after the mayor supported keeping alive a potential link from her quiet cul-de-sac to the Barrys Point Rd industrial precinct in a close council vote on Wednesday.
A bid by Councillor Tony Holman to kill the project, which has been the subject of several unfavourable reports since 2003, was defeated 8-6 and replaced by a resolution that it be reconsidered in a review of the council's long-term budget in two years.
But Takapuna Community Board deputy chairman Andrew Williams, a former councillor who intends challenging Mr Wood for the mayoralty in October, declared that the causeway would not proceed if he won office.
He feared it was being eyed for a busy route to the Northern Busway's proposed new Akoranga station, but said it would never be accepted by Takapuna citizens.
"The very idea of bulldozing a high-volume bus lane through quiet cul-de-sacs and across a pristine mangrove inlet which includes the historic Maori Patuone Walkway is simply unacceptable."
He predicted it would become North Shore's equivalent of the battle in Auckland City in the 2004 local body elections over the proposal to run a motorway across Hobson Bay.
Mr Wood said a link from Byron Ave was just one of a raft of possibilities to be considered in a $110,000 strategic study aimed at creating better transport connections between Takapuna and Barrys Pt Rd.
A long-term budget provision of $12.5 million for a "Takapuna East-West Connection" covered the whole area from Lake Pupuke in the north and Esmonde Rd to the south, and he believed it was a mistake for council documents to have named Byron Ave as a bridgehead for any such link.
But neither could Byron Ave or any other option be ruled out before the study was completed.
Mrs Allen said the upper reach of Shoal Bay was a place of great natural charm and residents had every right to keep living in quiet streets.
Auckland helpdesk
Getting the runaround? If you live in the Auckland region and have a gripe about a local issue, we'd like to help. Starting soon, our weekly helpdesk column will take your questions and problems and find the answers.
Email the Herald Newsdesk