The next Auckland Council Transport Committee meeting is on April 5th (next Tuesday), and the agenda for that meeting was published today. Within the agenda is a report on the Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative (AMETI) – a large transport project that I’ve discussed on quite a few occasions before. AMETI is a very large, very long-term project, and has been broken up into a number of packages and stages:

It’s a bit tricky to read much of what’s described above, but the first section where we’re likely to see some action is around Panmure. This is described in a bit more detail in the agenda paper: It’s interesting to look at the prices of some of these phases. Essentially it would seem that the road-building phase (the yellow phase 1) is what’s actually expensive – I wonder if that’s where the council’s transport budget is going – while the public transport focused section (the blue phase 2) seems much cheaper. This is quite interesting, as the blue phase is what generates the biggest benefits I think, the first step in creating a proper southeast rapid transit line.

Some of the later phases of AMETI, which include big projects like a duplication of the Pakuranga Highway bridge plus other grade-separation roading projects, once again seem to be where most of the money ends up being spent. I wonder if we need to take a good, hard look at what benefits we’re really going to get out of these stages, particularly if we focus first on creating a top-quality public transport corridor and potentially reduce pressure on the roading system by providing alternatives.

Some of the details for the Panmure phase are quite good – particularly the transport interchange between buses and trains. This is shown below: That is a kind of weird looking train. A single ADK carriage? (Or it it meant to be a bus?)

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4 comments

  1. Wouldn’t it be wise when building new trenches or stations along the eastern rail corridor to leave room for a third track in the middle? (if no two) Just thinking that in a decade or two won’t we want that to help separate freight services between the port and Southdown from the transit services?

  2. I believe that they have to get the design of the Ellerslie-Panmure Hwy sorted this year as Kiwirail plan to replace it as part of the Christmas works at the end of this year.

    Erentz – yes they definitely should allow for three tracks through here but whats the bet it doesn’t happen.

  3. I’m sure a lot of the roading aspects of this project (and their cost) could be avoided if they did the PT part first, traffic volumes across the HB for instance, would still be increasing rather than declining, as they are now, if the Northern Busway didn’t exist.

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