KEY POINTS:
Panmure may get an underground railway station to make space for more buses and buildings in a $1.33 billion transport package aimed at boosting development in Auckland's east.
In a refinement of the 10-year Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative (Ameti) package, planners propose a $38 million "lid" for
the relocated Panmure station.
It is due for political consideration over the next week.
If it goes ahead it will give buses more room to transfer passengers at what will be a key public transport hub and allow more mixed-use development in the town centre.
It will complement a plan to collapse the Panmure roundabout into a four-way intersection and to divert traffic along a duplicated Pakuranga Bridge across the Tamaki River.
Buses will take over one lane each way across Panmure Bridge, which becomes choked with traffic trying to reach the roundabout.
But officials have dropped plans for a 700m tunnel taking Mt Wellington Highway under Waipuna Rd. The tunnel would have cost around $150 million and would have required widening a stretch of Mt Wellington Highway to 60m.
Residents opposing the tunnel won support from international design experts commissioned by the Ameti project partners - the Auckland and Manukau city councils and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority.
A new plan - part of the package due for consideration on Friday by Auckland City's transport committee and next week by Manukau City - will retain the intersection but add a new road 200m to the east, as a short-cut between Waipuna Rd and Mt Wellington Highway.
Auckland City roads manager Matthew Rednall acknowledged that the tunnel degraded a tree-lined boulevard the council wants to create along Mt Wellington Highway, to which bus and cycle lanes will be added.
The new diversion road will end at an intersection further north, from where another proposed 3km arterial route will take traffic under the Ellerslie-Panmure Highway to Glen Innes.
Mr Rednall expected that it would divert traffic from the proposed boulevard, while saving $113 million.
Refinements of the Ameti project have shaved $170 million off the overall cost, previously put at $1.5 billion.
But Manukau is the only beneficiary, as its share has dropped to $436 million while Auckland's has risen by $23 million - to $893 million.
Manukau's projects include a new flyover through the Pakuranga town centre, to divert traffic from Howick to the new Pakuranga Bridge, and a city-bound bus lane along Ti Rakau Drive.
Officials have dropped an eastbound bus-lane, to reduce property acquisitions.
Auckland has allocated $800 million in its 10-year plan to 2016, of which it expects to raise $700 million from Government subsidies, rates and development levies.
It will have to consider other funding sources such as road tolls to make up the difference.
Although project construction savings for the city have dropped by $61 million to $583 million, land acquisition calculations have risen by $76 million to $376 million. That is despite a reduced need to buy land - from 383 to 340 properties. But an economists' report predicts 13,000 new jobs from developments facilitated by the project, pumping another $1.25 billion a year into the local economy by 2030.
That is on top of $1.4 billion from developments expected to proceed in any event.