Botany Town Centre. There are more than 130,000 people living in East Auckland, making it bigger than Dunedin or Tauranga. Photo / Ted Baghurst
Botany Town Centre. There are more than 130,000 people living in East Auckland, making it bigger than Dunedin or Tauranga. Photo / Ted Baghurst
Opinion
COMMENT:
East Auckland, with its rapidly growing population, is chronically under-served by public transport, local health services and community centres compared to the North Shore, West Auckland, Auckland Central and South Auckland.
There are more than 130,000 people living in East Auckland, making it bigger than Dunedin or Tauranga, and a further 30,000 projected to call the East home by 2030.
Taking transport as an example, the Eastern Busway stage of the $1.4 billion AMETI (Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative) project was conceived in 2006 to provide a dedicated busway between Botany, Pakuranga and Panmure town centres.
With a high frequency of buses between Botany and Panmure, commuters then catch trains to Britomart. The great hope is by 2025 we will be able to travel by bus and train from Botany to Britomart in less than 40 minutes, better connecting us to the city and reducing road congestion.
AMETI also includes delivery of the Reeves Road Flyover that will link Pakuranga Rd to the South-Eastern Highway past Pakuranga Plaza, allowing the busway to flow without competing with traffic heading to the motorway from our eastern suburbs.
Artist's impression of the Eastern Busway. Photo / Supplied
Here's both the challenge and opportunity in the delivery of AMETI. It started in 2006 and has only produced the Panmure Rail Station, opened six years ago, and adjacent infrastructure such as the new connector Te Horeta Rd.
The next stage is the busway being built from Panmure to Pakuranga. It took from 2014 to 2018 to get consents and consultation finished, construction starting only in 2019, with the full Stage 1 of AMETI due for completion next year.
The Pakuranga to Botany leg is due to be finished in Stages 2, 3 and 4, including bus stations at Pakuranga and Botany, and the Reeves Rd Flyover at Pakuranga Town Centre. Given how much consulting and consenting is still required and the slow progress on Stage 1, our eastern communities have fading optimism all of this will be ready by 2025.
Does it really take 11 years to complete a 7.8km busway? Our bar for infrastructure must be set higher and our delivery standards improved.
We can learn from other small developed countries with similar population.
The Oresund Bridge, an engineering marvel connecting the Denmark capital of Copenhagen to Malmo in Sweden across the Oresund Strait is a cable-stayed bridge that extends nearly 8km to an artificial island where it transitions into a tunnel of another 4km. Construction began in 1995, with the bridge opening to traffic in 2000 — from beginning to end in just five years and a $4.7 billion cost.
It was just nine years from when Kennedy first challenged America to send people to the moon to when it actually happened, and that was in the 1960s. Are we really saying we're being super-ambitious to create a $1.4b, 7.8km busway that will take 11 years at best, but most likely much longer? All this while East Aucklanders pay more than a fair share of regional fuel taxes.
Christopher Luxon with Simeon Brown. Photo / Jason Oxenham
There have already been too many delays to AMETI, and recent information from Auckland Transport suggests there could be more in Stages 2-4. The project is now undergoing a "value engineering" process, which is fine, but it is important the quality of the end output and vision is not compromised.
We need to be reassured that the final delivered transport solution will do what has been promised and be the game-changer we want it to be for East Auckland.
We assume AT still believes buses (rather than efficient trackless trains) are still the very best transport mode to support East Aucklanders in the 2030s and beyond, and that this project will cater for our growing population.
Can the remaining stages of the busway be built faster by starting at both ends, in Pakuranga and Botany? Construction could link in the middle like the Channel Tunnel, which was completed in six years.
As we work hard to recover economically from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, the Eastern Busway presents an exciting opportunity. If the Government and AT give this "shovel-ready" fully-funded infrastructure project the very highest priority it will create desperately needed jobs and local investment. If more money is needed to deliver the project faster or to current specifications, that should be considered.
