Motorway noise plea falls on deaf ears

By BERNARD ORSMAN

People living near New Zealand's busiest stretch of road, the Southern Motorway between Gillies Ave and Khyber Pass Rd, are screaming out for noise barriers.

So far, their calls have failed to produce action. Transit New Zealand says the Auckland City Council should pay for the work but the council says it is a job for Transit.

The bureaucratic runaround has angered a group of Epsom and Newmarket residents, who have listened to Transit talk of improving the capacity and safety of the central-city motorway while brushing aside their concerns about excessive noise.

Paul Davies, who chairs a committee of about 60 residents whose homes border the southern side of the motorway, yesterday said sound barriers should be part of Transit's $195.35 million Spaghetti Junction works. The group had a quote of $60,000 to supply barriers over 200m.

Motorway noise was less of an issue during the day, when traffic was heavy and slow, Mr Davies said, but it was deadly at night, when the roar of truck engines vibrated through the walls of his 18-month-old home in Maungawhau Rd.

The noise was a constant, excessive and intolerable feature of life for local residents, he said.

The residents said Transit was ignoring guidelines in the council district plan to limit noise levels in residential areas to 55 decibels during the day and 45 decibels at night.

One resident, audiologist Alan Ferguson, said Transit's own monitoring of noise levels at 40 Mountain Rd was 73 decibels most of the day, which he said was capable of causing sleep disturbance and health effects such as hypertension.

No one from Transit's Auckland office was available yesterday for comment.

However, a letter from council chief executive David Rankin to Epsom MP Richard Worth, who has taken up the residents' case, said that Transit had not found a significant increase in noise since work started on the motorway upgrade.

Mr Rankin said that while the district plan had noise provisions, these did not apply to Transit under the existing motorway designation.

He said Transit had suggested that if local communities wanted sound barriers the council should pay for them but the council believed Transit should foot the bill.

Transport committee chairman Greg McKeown said Transit should at least have costed the option of sound barriers, since it was spending tens of millions of dollars.