Southeastern upgrades back on track

Panmure's notorious roundabout, which will become a signalised intersection under the Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative. Photo / Kenny Rodger.

Frustration with slow progress towards $1.33 billion worth of transport upgrades for southeastern Auckland has spilled into the boardroom of the region's new transport organisation.

Auckland Transport chairman Mark Ford said at his board's monthly meeting that the suburbs east of the Tamaki River were "totally disenfranchised" in terms of reliable transport.

"I feel the southeast is the most disenfranchised part of Auckland for transport and public transport and I support your project totally," he told managers after a presentation about efforts towards kicking the grandly titled Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative (Ameti) to life.

Board member Mike Lee, who chairs Auckland Council's transport committee, said he was singularly unimpressed with progress since the project evolved in 2005 from the contentious Eastern Highway proposal.

"It is time to go ahead and do something tangible for these people in the southeastern part of Auckland."

Transport Agency regional director Stephen Town, who has a non-voting seat on the Auckland Transport board, said the project had been "going around in circles for too long" and indicated his organisation's support for prioritising component parts.

But it was the agency which helped to put brakes on what was initially proposed as a $1.5 billion project, by reviewing it and requiring it to be staged over 20 years in six packages as a condition of providing Government subsidies. At least $103 million has already been spent on the project through the former Auckland and Manukau City Councils, of which $94 million was for property purchases, and the rest for studies and preliminary design work.

Consultants are also in the midst of a $15 million detailed design contract for the first package of about $200 million of projects around Panmure, including a new four-lane road to Glen Innes and the replacement of the suburb's difficult mega-roundabout with a signalised intersection.

Auckland Transport's major projects manager, Rick Walden, said work would start next year on replacing road bridges over the eastern railway line to prepare for rail electrification. Construction work around the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway, beneath which the new road will run through a trench, was likely to start in 2012 and the roundabout would be replaced in 2015 or 2016.

Mr Ford said he wanted planners to focus on rapid transit. Mr Walden said it might be possible to re-prioritise some of the project packages to suit community needs and provide early economic benefits from better transport.

More commercial traffic already moved across the Tamaki River each day than over the Harbour Bridge, and roads would keep getting more congested as the area's population grew by up to 25,000 people in the next 20 years.