KEY POINTS:
Champions of "sustainable" transport are disappointed with a Manukau City Council decision not to extend a new branch railway line into the centre of the city.
The council decided last week that an estimated extra cost of $10 million to bring the line 60m east of Davies Ave,
into a carpark near its headquarters, was too high when it was trying to stop rates from rising more than 4.9 per cent.
That followed advice from Government agency Ontrack that its budget of about $50 million towards the $72 million link from the main trunk line at Puhinui would not extend past a 9m-deep trench on the western side of Davies Ave, except for a basic pedestrian underpass to the carpark.
Although that would still leave passengers 140m short of the civic offices, and even further from the Southmall shopping centre, the station would be on the doorstop of a potential tertiary education development in Hayman Park.
But Forum for Auckland Sustainable Transport spokesman Bevan Woodward, representing a coalition of several groups such as Walk Auckland and his own Cycle Action Auckland, said similar limited thinking was behind capacity constraints already emerging at the Britomart rail terminal.
"We have to future-proof these things and start getting it right," he said.
Mr Woodward's coalition wants provisions for a rail link to be extended east in a loop through Botany Downs to Panmure, rather than relying on feeder buses to bring passengers to an interchange at the proposed Manukau rail-head.
Although Manukau transport planners are prepared to envisage replacing buses with a light-rail link through the east once the population grows large enough in new suburbs such as Flat Bush and Dannemora, they believe it would be too difficult to run heavy trains under or over the Southern Motorway.
But Mr Woodward said that should not be insurmountable, and noted that a road flyover of the motorway was already being built with full Government funding as part of the $210 million link between State Highways 1 and 20.
He said the $50 million budgeted by Ontrack for a branch line stopping short of Manukau's commercial hub was just "lunch money" compared with the $1.89 billion Transit NZ hoped to spend on twin motorway tunnels under Waterview, albeit with potential help from private investors.
Manukau councillor Bob Wichman said he had always believed the rail link was to extend to Dannemora, and he was disappointed by the limited nature of what was now proposed.
"We are being told we are getting less and less for our buck," he told fellow councillors, after hearing that the link would initially serve only rail movements to and from central Auckland, and that it might be 10 years before Manukau could be linked to stations further south.
But Manukau Mayor Len Brown said that, while he remained committed to early planning for rapid public transport to and from his eastern suburbs, the priority was to accept the money already on offer from the Government.
If his council hesitated in doing that, it risked having the money reallocated "to other squeaky wheels, and there are lots of squeaky wheels in transport".
He told the Herald that although light rail might become more viable than buses to and from the east, there would always have to be some form of interchange at central Manukau, as he would not countenance extending heavy rail to his suburban hinterland.
"You can't do it in local residential areas and I'm not going to."
At the same time, he envisaged a future combination of heavy and light rail in a loop right around Manukau, linking the country's four main industrial-commercial areas including East Tamaki and the airport via both Onehunga and Puhinui.
