World Cup target for Victoria tunnel

Auckland City Mayor John Banks (left) and John Key chat outside the Birdcage Tavern. Photo / Greg Bowker

Auckland's $430 million Victoria Park motorway tunnel has been added to a clutch of projects for completion in time for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Construction company Fletcher Building's infrastructure chief Mark Binns offered yesterday, as lead contractor for a consortium of builders and designers, to deliver the project more than two years earlier than a previous Government target of late 2013.

"We are very confident this is going to be a very successful project," he told Prime Minister John Key and Transport Minister Steven Joyce under the glass roof of an annex to the historic Birdcage Tavern, which lies in the path of the 440m three-lane, one-way northbound tunnel, and is to be moved and restored for up to $10 million.

"And we look forward, Prime Minister, to seeing you at the opening prior to the World Cup."

Fletcher, which will work in an alliance with the Transport Agency as well as Palmerston North road-builders Higgins Contractors, Beca Engineers and Australian tunnelling experts Parsons Brinckerhoff, is already striving to complete three other big Auckland infrastructure projects before the cup.

As well as leading the $240.5 million redevelopment of Eden Park, it is duplicating the Manukau Harbour motorway crossing for $230 million and digging a $160 million railway trench through New Lynn.

But Mr Binns assured the Herald his target was realistic, given a freeing up of construction resources such as on Tauranga's $210 million duplicate harbour bridge, which Fletcher expects to complete in September.

Mr Key said he believed Fletcher was "serious" about its offer.

"They've obviously got the capability of doing it, they are a very successful group of companies in their own right, and I am sure they'll work highly efficiently," he said. "They have a target there for the Rugby World Cup - let's hope they make it."

The project will also include adding a lane in each direction to the 1.7km motorway section between the tunnel and Auckland Harbour Bridge, making a 10-lane road corridor plus a southbound shoulder for buses.

Northbound buses will share the motorway with other traffic, but the Transport Agency will install red lights to reserve the outside lane for them in what it hopes will be only rare cases of congestion.

All four viaduct lanes will be reserved for southbound traffic, eliminating the need for what the agency calls difficult and dangerous lane-changing now seen through St Marys Bay.

Mr Joyce, who lives north of Albany, said 165,000 vehicles used the corridor daily and he had first-hand experience of long queues starting about 6.45am.

Agency chairman Brian Roche said the motorway widening work would start no later than November, and possibly as early as September, to be followed by a start on the cut-and-cover tunnel through the park by March.

The physical work involved in the contract announced yesterday was worth $340 million out of a total project cost of up to $430 million, which would be "a significant boost to the economy and create a lot of activity and employment".