It’s always interesting to rummage through the agenda of Auckland City Council’s Transport Committee meetings, as they often throw up some quite interesting information. There are probably a few blog post’s worth of information in this month’s agenda, but for now I’ll focus on what it says about the Waterview Connection.
For a start, it’s highly disappointing to see that Auckland City has backed down from its previous position of staunchly supporting a full tunnel option for the Waterview Connection. Whilst I personally am a fan of not building the damn thing at all (and spending the $1.4 billion on the CBD rail loop) the full tunnel option was chosen after a long process of consultation between NZTA, the local community and – importantly – the Auckand City Council. Of course, we all know what’s happened in the last few months as NZTA has backed away from the previous option and now proposed a semi-tunnel option. If the community was hoping for a bit of help from council in their battle for either the full tunnel option or nothing at all, it seems like they’re going to have to fight for it.
Here’s what the council agenda item (which hasn’t yet been signed off by the transport committee, but it’s hardly likely they’ll kick up much of a fuss) recommends:
There may be a bit of hope here though, as Auckland City Council will be drafting up a fuller response to the new NZTA option:
It would certainly be interesting if their new resolution came out strongly against the new option. How does Auckland City Council feel about the open space zoned parts of Alan Wood Reserve being split in half by a giant 6 lane motorway? What about the effects of this motorway on nearby residents? What does council think of NZTAs plans to submit the Notice of Requirement documents straight to a board of inquiry, thereby removing any chance of the council actually having input into the consenting of the proposal?
Another interesting piece of information included in that agenda item is the release of the other two options NZTA looked at that were within the $1.4 billion funding cap that Steven Joyce gave them. The three options are shown in the map below, with the “chosen option” being in blue:
Clearly it was a no-brainer for NZTA to choose this option, as the other two would have been completely horrific. But what’s a bit scary here is that these other options are the “fall backs” if (for some reason) the chosen Option 3 becomes too expensive. What if an oil price spike next year leads to plummeting petrol sales in New Zealand and therefore greatly reduced income for the National Land Transport Fund that will be paying for the Waterview Connection? Would we just abandon the project altogether, or would we need to start looking at cheaper options like the two shown above?
Here’s NZTA’s analysis of the three options:
Pretty scary to think that we may have ended up with either Option 1 or Option 2.
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