Puhoi motorway start a 'token'

Transit New Zealand intends making a start today on its long-awaited motorway extension to Puhoi, but critics suspect this is just a token effort to satisfy an Environment Court deadline.

It is pressing ahead with a $20 million preliminary grant from the national land transport fund - even though it will need another $300 million to complete the project, and the Government has delayed deciding whether to let it toll motorists to meet $140 million of the bill.

The roading agency has been under pressure to start the project before appearing in court next week when it must indicate how much longer traffic will need to keep using a link road through Orewa to the existing coastal highway.

Without such an indication, it faces having to close the link road on February 7, leaving long queues of holiday traffic to back up again through Silverdale.

Transit chairman David Stubbs expressed confidence on Friday that the $20 million advance agreed to earlier in the week by Land Transport New Zealand would allow his agency to meet its obligation to the Environment Court.

The advance will be used to, among other things, build a retaining wall at the northern portal of twin road tunnels through Johnsons Hill, north of Waiwera, while Treasury and Ministry of Transport officials "peer review" Transit's own work on toll collection technologies.

Although Transit had hoped for an order-in-council by Christmas to allow tolling, this will not now be available before March or April, despite word from Transport Minister Peter Hodgson that he is "favourably inclined" to such a scheme.

But Rodney Development Council chief Mike Smith fears the Government may be getting cold feet about introducing tolls in an election year, and says the court may have to keep the project under continued supervision to ensure the link road does not become permanent.

Mr Smith's organisation of 7740 businesses wants the motorway extended, but without tolls.

Another critic of tolls, Waiwera Valley resident and MMP activist Dr Hans Grueber, believes Transit's start on the project without an order-in-council will undermine its case for charging motorists extra to use the 7km extension.

He is considering asking Auditor-General Kevin Brady to investigate the project, saying tolls are a less honest and more inefficient way of raising money for infrastructure than road taxes already paid by motorists, as evident from Tauranga's financially troubled Route K.

He believes there must be other reasons for pushing for tolls, which he says will require a new industry to collect the money and become a first step towards privatising roads as well as potentially opening the way for greater surveillance of citizens.

"New Zealanders will not only be held up on the Queen's highway, but the highway itself will be stolen from them," he said.

Dr Grueber says an order-in-council will not withstand a judicial review he is prepared to seek if necessary, as he claims a community survey on which Transit is relying to demonstrate strong support for a tolled road is seriously flawed.

But another Waiwera resident opposed to the project on environmental grounds, Armie Armstrong, believes a battle to persuade Transit to bridge entire bush catchments of high ecological value has been lost now that construction is poised to start.

Transit says tolls will pay for an environmentally superior motorway, with tunnels through Johnsons Hill instead of a deep cut originally planned, and "eco-viaducts" rather than embankments across one tributary each of the Nukumea and Otanerua streams.

Mr Armstrong and Dr Wendy Pond, of the Manu Waiata waterway group, claim culverts are inadequate for the passage of adult fish, and want viaducts across at least three other tributaries to met Hauraki Gulf Marine Park requirements.