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A $145 million plan to revitalise New Lynn by sinking its railway lines into a trench and boosting traffic crossings has won strong backing from Auckland Regional Council's transport policy committee.
Although Waitakere City may be hard-pressed to win Treasury approval for the scheme, regional councillors yesterday accepted
that the alternative - of duplicating the western railway line through New Lynn at ground-level for a relatively modest $39 million - would put intolerable road-traffic pressure on the town centre.
City development group manager Yvonne Rust told the transport committee that New Lynn's strategic location on the edge of the Auckland isthmus made it an important regional growth centre but it would also become "a natural bottleneck for the West" if rail and road traffic ended up competing harder for the same space.
She warned that traffic likely to spill off the Roskill motorway extension now under construction would become heavier if motorists headed through New Lynn to avoid the proposed road tolls on the western ring route.
"If they are not going to jump on the toll road and they all come down through New Lynn, we expect substantial increases," she said.
The railway line already presented a barrier holding up the development of New Lynn, and duplicating the tracks without providing more crossings would increase risks for pedestrians now too often using "goat tracks" to get from one side to the other illegally.
Waitakere City proposes lowering the railway lines into a trench which would be open except at five ground-level crossings - compared with three now in place.
It also wants to extend Clark St westward to cross the railway over a bridge before joining Great North Rd.
Traffic heading along Clark St to the centre of New Lynn already faces frequent delays when rail-crossing arms come down next to a notorious roundabout fed by four roads.
Regional council strategic policy chairman Paul Walbran said that once rail services were boosted to one train every 10 minutes in each direction, compared with 15 minutes now, the crossing would be closed to traffic more than it was open.
"So you will have reduced capacity and increased traffic, and almost complete gridlock," he said.
Ms Rust said that although Government rail agency Ontrack had begun geotechnical investigations into the trenching proposal, a conventional cost analysis being performed by the Treasury was narrowly focussed on benefits to rail without considering the broader implications for New Lynn and the region.
Her council's consultants estimated total benefits at $218 million and she pointed to a doubling in recent years of commercial property values in neighbouring Henderson following redevelopment investment.
Waitakere City is calling New Lynn business-people and local MP David Cunliffe to a meeting on Monday to gauge local support for the proposal, but says wide consultation would precede any future requests for financial contributions.