Tunnel on track despite train doubts

Investigations into a 3.5km rail tunnel under central Auckland are continuing, despite uncertainty over how many electric trains the Government can afford to buy the region.

KiwiRail and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority are today announcing a $5 million study, to be funded equally by the two organisations, to find a preferred double-tracked tunnel route from the western end of Britomart Station to Mt Eden.

The study by a team of four consultancies will run until the end of next year.

It envisages a $1 billion-plus tunnel to be ready 2020, doubling the capacity of Britomart before it becomes choked by trains having to keep backing out of the station rather than circulating freely through an inner-city loop.

But the announcement follows Transport Minister Steven Joyce's refusal to guarantee the Government would have enough money available to buy 140 electric railcars sought by Auckland Regional Council and its transport authority subsidiary.

"No, I cannot," the minister said in Parliament in answer to a bid by the Green Party's Auckland transport spokesman, Keith Locke, to gain such a guarantee.

Mr Joyce said last night that the Government was making no more and no less money available than Labour did when it joined Auckland's $1 billion rail electrification project.

He also dismissed concern raised by regional council chairman Mike Lee that a re-allocation of money in the Transport Agency's three-year programme, due out today, towards more new highways would result in Auckland's railway services being slowly starved of operating funds.

Mr Lee, who the minister said on Tuesday had a "lovely paranoia" about the Government's role in the rail plan, called on Mr Joyce yesterday "to deliver on his commitment to restart the international tender [process] which he disrupted in March, so we can purchase the 140 electric carriages that he took the funding from".

"We have given him a lot of grace, a lot of time, and his heart is not in it," Mr Lee said.

"His heart is in motorways and holiday roads - it is not in delivering a world-class rapid-transit system for Auckland."

Mr Joyce said Auckland would find itself well provided for across all transport modes in today's funding announcements.

"But at the same time there isn't a bottomless well of funding."

He said $500 million allocated by Labour to electrifying the Auckland railway tracks and $500 million which the Government had promised for electric trains, while abolishing a regional fuel tax to pay for those, was at the limit of affordability and he was concerned about potential cost overruns across both elements.

Mr Lee said the inner-city tunnel was "absolutely essential if we are to achieve the quantum leap in Auckland rail patronage that we need - but it can't work without electric trains".

KiwiRail network commercial manager Neil Buchanan said the tunnel route would almost certainly reach under the Albert St road reservation to Aotea Square, but the study was needed to determine how best to reach Mt Eden from there.