Bernard Orsman: Mayors' u-turn on the road to commonsense politics

COMMENT

With six weeks to the local body elections, John Banks and Sir Barry Curtis have unveiled a "commonsense" version of the eastern highway.

Instead of a multi-lane highway including bus lanes, cycleways and walking paths from the city and through the eastern suburbs to Manukau, the mayors have gone to the other extreme with a "sound, sensible and fundable" alternative that looks more like a goat track than a Los Angeles freeway.

Two years ago the project was to cost $460 million. A year ago it shot up to $2.9 billion. In March, the worst-case scenario had it knocking on $3.9 billion. Yesterday, the price was pegged back to between $1.1 billion and $1.4 billion, excluding extras for public transport and a road through East Tamaki.

The mayors claimed 75 per cent of the traffic benefits would be retained, 1000 fewer homes bulldozed and 80 per cent of the concern in the community would quietly go away.

But these benefits and Banks' own admission that the March scheme was massive, ugly and unaffordable were met with cynicism by critics. Mayoral candidates Dr Bruce Hucker and Christine Fletcher respectively labelled the new plans a "colossal backdown" and achieving "zilch", while anti-highway campaigner and Action Hobson candidate Christine Caughey said the highway had been parked up until after the election.

Manukau mayoral candidate Len Brown described the backdown as Sir Barry's biggest defeat in 21 years as mayor.

Manukau still has the tricky issue of resolving whether to take the highway along built-up Ti Rakau Drive or through industrial East Tamaki.

Sir Barry's council will not make that decision until February.

If critics want anything to fire at Banks and Curtis they just need to quote eastern transport corridor director Grant Kirby, who yesterday said that once the scaled-back highway hit Tamaki Drive "there will be a bottleneck in the city as there is now".

The vexed issue of public transport along the eastern corridor will also be debated fiercely in the final build-up to the elections. The only provision for public transport is bus lanes between Pakuranga and Panmure. The Auckland Regional Council has been given a hospital pass to plan and fund public transport initiatives, including walking and cycling, leaving Banks and Curtis to get on with building their road.

Watching from the sidelines is the country's state highway builder, Transit - the third partner in the project with the Auckland and Manukau councils.

Transit chairman David Stubbs says right now the highway lacks the necessary political credibility in Auckland.


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