Motorists face tolls to hasten road construction

Motorists in Auckland and Waikato face road tolls if they want early starts on four key highway links.

Transit New Zealand yesterday named Auckland's partly-built western ring route and two projects near Hamilton as tolls prospects. The agency needs strong community support to get Government consent.

Transit also announced a plan to start a 5km motorway bypass of Hobsonville within the year, despite an almost doubling of its estimated cost to $174 million which threatened to delay it until 2007.

That threat receded after the Government gave an extra $280 million over four years to Auckland state highways - and $50 million for passenger rail - in a $500 million national transport handout from a tax windfall.

Transit, which has $340 million for state highways nationally from that allocation and will borrow another $50 million against future grants, is confident of obtaining $3.2 billion of Government money for state highways in Auckland in the next 10 years.

But it says it still have to borrow another $1 billion to complete the ring route between Manukau and Albany, and repay much of the money from tolls.

Although it cannot charge tolls without Government approval , it is already receiving top political support for its plans, and even praise from business leaders previously critical of delays in completing Auckland's main roading network.

"The precise timetable of this work will depend on the willingness of Aucklanders to accept some tolling," Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday at a Transit presentation in Auckland.

She was referring primarily to a proposed $1.2 billion motorway extension through Avondale and a $184 million second Mangere Bridge, both of which Transit says it can start building in four years if allowed to collect tolls.

"I have long believed that tunnelling or cut and cover through sensitive areas will be required," Helen Clark said of the Avondale project, which will pass through her Mt Albert electorate on its way to join the Northwestern Motorway.

The Government has already agreed to an inflation adjustable toll of $1.80c on the Puhoi motorway extension north of Auckland, and for a similar scheme to pay for a duplicate Tauranga Harbour bridge.

Transit has yet to decide where it will join the Northwestern motorway, although a final route through Waterview is its preference.

This is likely to affect about 400 residential and other properties.

The agency hopes tolls will also allow it to start building in four years a $87 million, six-kilometre bypass of Te Rapa north of Hamilton not previously due to begin until 2012.

This is to relieve congestion choking Hamilton's northern approach along State Highway 1.