SH1 upgrade faster if a toll road - study

An extension of the Northern Motorway over the ridges and valleys between Puhoi and Warkworth could be completed within nine years if it were a toll road.

Transport Minister Steven Joyce said yesterday an early sign from an investigation into upgrading that part of State Highway 1 was that it could be complete within nine years.

However, the second stage of the 38km upgrade project, an expressway from Warkworth to just north of Wellsford, would be "more challenging to finish in that time".

Last March, the Government named the four-lane extension a road of national significance and allocated $60 million for route investigations.

This includes alignments for bypasses around urban chokepoints Warkworth and Wellsford.

A report from the Transport Agency released yesterday by Mr Joyce gives estimates of cost for the whole job. These vary from $1.3 billion to $2.04 billion depending on how long it takes.

Mr Joyce said a $10.7 billion commitment to state highways over 10 years meant that funding was not the big issue for the project.

However, the agency was asked to investigate having the first section as a toll road, carrying on from the Northern Gateway tunnels project which opened a year ago as a tollway.

Mr Joyce said this was a means of getting the road done more quickly than if funding was spread over the 10 years.

He acknowledged it had been frustrating for motorists sweating in 25km-long traffic jams from Warkworth on peak Christmas holidays.

When Labour was in Government it seemed to believe the job finished at Puhoi and had no intention of four-laning beyond that.

Labour MP for Mt Albert David Shearer said Auckland saw building the inner-city rail loop as top priority.

"Yes, thousands of Aucklanders use the Puhoi-Wellsford road for a handful of weeks to holiday, but they are also the same Aucklanders who are screaming out for a decent public transport system."

Mr Joyce said design, consultation and consenting processes all took time.

The agency's target was to complete investigation, public consultation and consent documents by mid-2011.

This would allow a "call in" application to be lodged with the Environmental Protection Agency, which was being done for the Waterview motorway project in Auckland.

"But the new process is not designed to stop people from having a say but is designed to get to an answer ... a decision for all those affected."

The agency assesses the project's benefit-cost ratio at 0.8 at today's dollar value or at 1.1 if "wider economic benefits" were taken into account.

Mr Joyce said the argument was getting lead infrastructure to help stimulate growth.

However, Green Party transport spokesman Keith Locke said the benefit-to-cost figures did not stack up and the party believed that money for the upgrade project would be better spent on public transport.

The agency's report said it might be possible to stagger the building of the first section by doing the Warkworth bypass first or extending the present toll road to the Puhoi turnoff.