The Government plans to begin building a second Waitematā harbour crossing in the central city this decade, bringing it forward from the 2040s and designing it to link up with the light rail project.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced the fast-tracked crossing in a speech to Auckland business leaders Thursday morning, hosted by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce.
The speech was understood to be an attempt to win back support in some of Auckland’s more central suburbs and among more well-off voters. Wayne Brown’s mayoral win last year was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the central government.
In a press release, Transport Minister Michael Wood said the city’s residents and businesses had made it clear that congestion was the biggest barrier to success.
“We want an unclogged, connected, and future-proofed transport network so Aucklanders can get to work on time, and don’t need to wake up earlier just to get their kids to school.”
A second Waitematā Harbour crossing would be designed to ensure there were options for all types of transport: cars, buses, trucks, light rail, cyclists, and pedestrians.
There are five possible plans for the crossing – both bridge and tunnel options — all of which include a new walking and cycling link and a light rail connection in the city center.
An “indicative business case” will be developed by the end of the year, with hopes of having a detailed design sometime after 2026 and construction to begin in 2029.
Tunnel options are likely to be more expensive than a second bridge, but is understood to be seen as a better long-term investment with lower maintenance costs and more opportunities for housing intensification on the North Shore.
The most expensive option would be building a light rail tunnel from downtown Auckland to Smales Farm via Belmont and Takapuna, as well as a road tunnel to replace the Harbour Bridge as State Highway 1. Some lanes of the existing bridge would be used for walking and cycling.
Building a second bridge for light rail, pedestrians, and three traffic lanes would be the cheapest option — although still estimated to be over $15 billion — and also the fastest to build. However, it would be the least resilient option and have a larger environmental impact.
Other options include building both a tunnel and a second bridge — which pedestrians would share with either cars or light rail. Two of these options envision the tunnel becoming SH1 and each carry a ball-park cost of $20 billion.
The government is asking for feedback on the five options and plans to decide on the preferred option in June this year.
76 Comments
Previously fastway
The 5 options in the herald look more like a white board write up of ministers calling out answers from around the room. None of which is very deep. In fact the 4th and 5th options are the same one
Good grief after all these decades, the HB stretched to the limit, and could fail. I thought the planning was somewhat advanced
Labour has morphed from Kiwi Build to Kiwi Bridge ...
100 % guaranteed that they'll choose the stupidest option ...
... and that it'll never get started under their watch ...
And that the only winners will be the consultants who'll tootle off into the sunset with tens of $ millions ...
“indicative business case by the end of the year.” this is pie in the sky stuff and seems to be no more than a desperately issued smokescreen over the present headlines of Labour/Greens malfunctions. Labour can hardly be certain of remaining in government and therefore any expenditure, for instance the layers on layers of consultants as always, should be deferred until after the next election because 6 months further out ain’t going to make an iota of difference to the final outcome.
What an absolute joke, this has been kicked down the road for decades and certainly won't be addressed by this current govt. If we get another Labour govt, we get the Greens so forget anything relating to vehicles on roads. It's a desperate vote grab, plain and simple.
... it's highly unlikely that Labour will get a third term . Events of the past week demonstrate how out of control they are ...
Their only hope of avoiding a complete shellacking in an election is to follow Patrick Smellie's theory of calling a snap election immediately after the budget ... immediately after Robbo sucks everyone in with lavish gifts of free money ... the lolly scramble election ...
The bridge is just one point in 20 kilometer circle of congestion. Build a new bridge and then what? Walking pace motorways past Albany.
I was most impressed with the Dopplemayer proposal for cable car. Seemed cheap ($200mil?) and as a complete package avoided the dollar feeding frenzy of our our multiple design consultant firms and ministry empires. Which probably is why it got no attention
I would give the cable branches to the likes of Birkenhead, Newmarket, Albany, and Kingsland. It would reduce the necessity we have now to use cars.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/128591692/auckland-gondola-200-million…
Not bollock, it was designed with a 50 year service life, and completed in 1959. And then they bolted the clip-ons onto it, and after many repairs and strengthening operations its still going, but not forever.
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/heather-du-plessis-allan-drive/audi…
“Our programme of ongoing monitoring, maintenance, upgrades and load management means the bridge is able to operate indefinitely as a key strategic asset in the Auckland network.”
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/media-releases/waka-kotahi-says-no-immediate-p…
And if you bothered to read further
“Any restrictions would be determined by the growth in additional heavy vehicle traffic using the bridge in the future. The current maintenance strategy and traffic demand assumes restrictions will be needed within the next 20 years.”
Mitigation could include limiting the lanes heavy vehicles can use, the number of heavy vehicles allowed on the bridge at any one time, or the time of day they are able to travel on the bridge.
Currently, buses use the clip on lanes, and all other overweight vehicles are required to use the truss bridge (or central lanes), unless there are specific reasons for using the clip-on lanes. However, no full HPMVs are allowed on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
While the bridge is in good condition, it has been strengthened on several occasions in the past – most recently in 2010 when 900 tonnes of steel was added to strengthen the box girders, or clip ons, to their maximum capacity. Further strengthening of the bridge is no longer feasible.
I mean, sure if they convert the whole thing to a pedestrian/cycle bridges its life will be practically indefinate, but its life as the main road traffic Harbour crossing in Auckland is severely limited, its already restricted use.
I've read the whole thing and fully understand the condition of the bridge.
The restrictions they are talking about are just lane management.
The original poster said the bridge will not be operational in 20 years time. It will be and it will be carrying more people and more goods because they will bring in more efficient lane management.
You're completely out of your depth on this. I'm telling you the bridge is fine and does not need replacing. A new road crossing is a massive waste of money and I can't believe on this site in particular people are not up in arms about pissing taxpayers money away on redundant infrastructure when we have so much worthy infrastructure that is actually required.
All I wanna say is that pls ask this Chinese company to do the whole job.
https://www.crbc.com/site/crbcEN/index.html
This announcement is the political equivalent of those flares that fighter aircraft shoot off to try and throw a heat seeking missile off course ... a distraction and nothing more.
I wonder if there's some grab bag in the Labour party HQ where you just pull some vague distraction out of a hat in response to bad political news. This happened to be on top of the pile.
The northern busway bought Auckland decades of future capacity without adding a single lane to the existing Harbour bridge. The bridge now carries more people by bus than in cars at peak times.
The lesson is clear. We do not need to spend massive amounts of money building road capacity, we need to reallocate road space to modes that are much more efficient. This makes it better for people who want to use public transport, walk or cycle AND makes it better for people driving.
If we didn't have the Northern Busway the bridge would be absolutely stuffed.
Just build a public transport, walking and cycling bridge first. Then assess how many people decide to use it rather than drive. Do this before committing billions to a new road crossing that may never be needed.
The current project team is led by consultants who benefit massively from making the project as big and expensive as possible as they will get a proportion of the total project construction costs. It's in their interests to try to make sure the road crossing is inextricably linked to the public transport and walking and cycling crossing because they know the road crossing doesn't stand on it's own.
Yep, that's why professional transport planners don't rely on what random punters think they see to make their decisions.
It's fairly easy to get data on bus ridership across the bridge and vehicle number and occupancy from the counters and cameras. More commuters cross the bridge on bus than by car.
The population of the North Shore has probably increased by at least 500,000 since the bridge was expanded in the 70's. People choose to travel by bus because the congestion makes car travel intolerable. But some have no choice but to travel by car. Because AT refused to build park and rides on land near to the busway stations. Either the surrounding roads are clogged with people who drive as close as they can. Park all day and return in the evening. Or they get on the motorway at say Takapuna to drive north to the Constellation Rd park and ride. Hoping they get there early enough to get a park . Then bus back the way they came to the city. Then the reverse in the evening.
How about a lane dedicated solely to vehicles passing through Auckland - once you are in the lane you can't get off until you are past Puhoi heading north, or Drury heading south. That way it keeps the commuters separate from freight and people just trying to go between Northland and the Waikato, or coming from Auckland to Northland or Waikato. I hate to think how much $$ is spent by having transported goods sitting in traffic for hours every day.
Some good analysis on here on the different options.
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2023/03/30/harbour-crossing-project-…
I know some people here will claim the site is full of Woke Lefty Greenies, it is but for the reasons explained below.
It's one of the weird quirks of New Zealand culture that shit transport planning (moaaaar roads and mooaaar subsidised parking) is associated with the right and good transport planning (public transport and active modes) with the left. In other countries there isn't this distinction. It's a shame because it makes it hard for anyone who understands transport to support National and Act on these issues.
It's also means you end up with a really weird situation where policy decisions based on principles that would seem to be more aligned with the right "spending restraint, providing people with options, using the market to allocate resources more efficiently" are opposed by right leaning parties.
And there it is. Your political persuasion defining your position on transport policies that do not need to be defined according to left and right.
Despite your "pragmatist" moniker it seems like you are anything but.
What I actually said was that some on here will claim it is full of Woke Greenie Lefties. It isn't, but because transport policy has been politicised into left and right people on this site will assume the people on there are lefty because they support good transport policy.
In Comparison to what they achieving in Europe, we are totally incompetent.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/fehmarnbelt-longest-immersed-tun…
The 11 km tunnel between Germany to Denmark under the North sea is budgeted to cost US$7.1 Billion or NZ$ 11.5 Billion.
Note that the system that they are using involves prefabricating the tunnel sections in a dry dock, then floating them to site. They are then dropped into a trench dug in the sea floor. This is the method that they very successfully used in the tunnel section of the Oresund bridge/tunnel. Maybe we should look into this method.
https://www.vinci-construction-projets.com/en/realisations/oresund-tunn…
This project was completed in 2000 and cost approx US$13-14 Billion in today's money.
Finally one of my favorites. The Milau viaduct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millau_Viaduct
2.5 km long 336, meters high? completed 2004
Total cost $US 424 million dollars of the time???
Really?
Most Aucklanders would find life impossible without extensive use of the car. If you want to change this you need to provide services that comprehensively compete with the car sufficiently so that people prefer not to use their car. Making car use very difficult is a very negative approach and you can see it playing out now in Auckland. The limited public services that are offered at the moment are totally inadequate and to make matters worse what they have are not run anywhere near adequately. Result a complete bloody mess.
If we make it harder for people to get around the population rate of decreasel in Auckland will increase significantly. Maybe that is the answer. Build some smaller more efficiently designed cities from scratch and move half the people out of Auckland.
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