Highway route will bowl further 100 homes

By BERNARD ORSMAN

More homes are in the path of the $460 million eastern highway than was previously known, official papers show.

The owners of at least 100 homes in Mt Wellington and Manukau are the latest to learn that the Auckland and Manukau City Councils could take their homes for the 27km highway from the city through the eastern suburbs to Manukau.

Residents on a stretch of Ti Rakau Drive in Pakuranga learned last Thursday that up to 200 homes in their neighbourhood were needed to turn the four-lane road into a six-lane highway.

The councils and the authors of the highway study said nothing last Thursday about further plans affecting residents in Mt Wellington and Manukau.

The full extent of property purchases emerged only when the councils released the full report by the highway consultants, Eastdor, late on Monday.

The report said: "There would need to be property acquisition for the widening of Waipuna Rd" and "significant property acquisition would also be required along Ti Rakau Drive and Te Irirangi Drive".

More houses will be taken if the councils adopt one option to widen Mt Wellington Highway.

"Early purchase, well before road widening designations are confirmed, will help ease but not eliminate the trauma that will be faced by residents directly affected by significant road widening," the Eastdor study says.

Rex Riddell, who has lived on Mt Wellington Highway for 30 years, said he supported the highway and would willingly sell to the Auckland council as long as he received a fair price.

"If it's got to go, it's got to go," said the 69-year-old resident.

But the news came as a big shock to Paul and Maliakoleti Hemaloto, who are raising six children in a 1960s five-bedroom weatherboard house on a large section in Waipuna Rd.

"I love it here. It is our first home and we are not going to move," said Mr Hemaloto.

Taxi driver Chandra Parkash has just bought a new home on Waipuna Rd for his wife and family.

"I won't sell unless the other people sell and I have to go," he said.

Greg McKeown, the chairman of Auckland City's transport committee, said only so much information could be released last Thursday and the full report was now available for everyone to digest and comment on over the next six weeks.

Options such as running the highway down Mt Wellington Highway were not set in stone, he said.

Asked why the council had not advised all those people affected by the highway, Mr McKeown said: "Where there are gaps found, we will work hard to get the information out there."

Feature: Getting Auckland moving

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