Will the proposed Waitemata Harbour Crossing be good for drivers?
There are many reasons to be concerned about the plan to add more road lanes across Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour: from the extreme cost of building such big tunnels and interchanges [$5-$6 billion and four times as much as just building rail tunnels], to the undesirable flooding of city streets and North Shore local roads with even more cars, to the increase in air pollution and carbon emission this will create, the loss of valuable city land to expanded on and off ramps and parking structures, to the impact on the harbour of exhaust stacks and a supersized motorway on the Shore, to the pressure this will put on the rest of the motorway system particularly through the narrow throat of Spaghetti Junction.…
91 Comments Parking must pay its way
Parking, parking, parking! In many places in many cities – even eco-friendly German cities – the price of parking is distorted by minimum parking requirements (MPRs). In these places, local governments regulate an over-supply of parking, which in turn holds down prices.…
Rail to the Shore for $11 billion ….. what?
As most of you are probably be aware, we’ve long suggested that we need to change our thinking about any future Waitemata Harbour Crossing. A $4-6 billion road tunnel and dramatically widened northern motorway which will only serve to flood the city centre with cars at a time when we’re trying to make it more pedestrian friendly.…
Timeframe for Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing Announced
The NZTA have recently published information on the Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing on their website, including all of their technical reports, which are mostly from around 2010. These reports have been available elsewhere, however most people wouldn’t know they existed so it is good that NZTA have pulled them all together on the main NZTA site.…
NZTA OIA Response on Additional Harbour Crossing
Prompted by the news that the NZTA is tendering work for route protection of the Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing (AWHC), I initiated an OIA request to the NZTA which has now been responded to.
I requested, on behalf of the Campaign for Better Transport:
1.…
Extend Light Rail to the North Shore?
Regular readers will be well aware that we strongly believe our transport agencies need to rethink the Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing. It appears to us that the price tag of $4-$6 billion is way out of proportion to the benefits another road crossing would provide. …
AWHC route protection moving ahead
I was recently sent a briefing from late May that the NZTA gave to the transport industry on the three large projects in Auckland that will be procuring work for. In all cases the work relates to designation and planning work and the projects are the Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing (AWHC), the Northern Corridor works and the East-West link.…
The Devonport-Parnell Bridge
Digging around online the other day I came across an Auckland Council Archives webpage with a series of old plans and charts on early Auckland harbour bridge and tunnel concepts. I do recommend having a poke around for fans of this sort of thing.…
How business groups view transport
Yesterday the Auckland Business Forum sponsored four pages of op-eds in the business section of the Herald about the need to improve transport for businesses. Unfortunately it ended up being a bit of a case of who left the gates to Jurassic Park open and let the Roadasaurs out.…
An Alternative AWHC
Two weeks ago the government once again talked about an Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing (AWHC). There are a number of reasons why another road based crossing is not a great idea – and even the Herald has been sceptical about it – but perhaps the biggest issue of all is the sheer cost of it.…
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