Highway should be scaled back says former planner

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The $3.5 billion eastern highway should be scaled back to four lanes between Panmure and the central city, says a former Auckland City Council transport planner, Ross Rutherford.

Of the four lanes, two should be reserved for buses, trucks and high-occupancy vehicles to achieve public transport and environmental objectives, Mr Rutherford last night told the Auckland branch of Engineers for Social Responsibility.

That would leave just one lane in each direction for cars that could be managed by tolls.

Mr Rutherford, council transportation planning manager before leaving a year ago to become a consultant, said the plans for four lanes of cars and two bus lanes would have serious environmental consequences across Hobson Bay, Tamaki Drive and the Purewa Creek mangroves.

It might be wise to scale the highway back to three lanes or fewer at the narrowest part of the eastern corridor at Purewa Creek, or abandon crossing Hobson Bay in favour of the more expensive Parnell tunnel route, he said.

Mr Rutherford called for greater urgency upgrading rail services through the corridor, including electrification and sorting out the potential bottleneck at Britomart.

Some of these issues are due to be debated by the council's transport committee on June 30, two days after the public present submissions on the route.

The council has indicated it will abandon the Parnell tunnel option in favour of crossing Hobson Bay and the eastern transport corridor political steering group is examining dropping bus lanes into the city if rail services can run every three to five minutes.

At the moment, Britomart cannot handle that frequency without the lines being extended to form an underground city loop at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Manukau City Council yesterday approved the route for the eastern highway with Mayor Sir Barry Curtis reaffirming his support to complete the project within 10 years.

But there are no signs that the Manukau or Auckland councils or Transit New Zealand will go to the next stage of protecting the land they need for the highway and seek resource consents, triggering $1 billion in property purchases.