The Labour Party Government wants to build twin tunnels under the Waitemata Harbour as an alternative to the current Auckland Harbour bridge.
It would be partially replaced by two tunnels, one in each direction, for private vehicles and another set of tunnels for light rail between Albany and the city center, to be built much later.
Overall the plan will take decades to complete and will cost tens of billions of dollars.
Construction on the vehicle tunnels has a targeted start date of 2029 and will cost as much as $15 billion dollars. It would run between the central Auckland motorway junction and Akoranga on the North Shore.
The light rail tunnels would likely be built later and would cost $11 billion, plus another $16b to extend the line from Takapuna to Albany. The full package could cost up to $45 billion.
That could be partially funded by congestion charges, or value capture taxes — which is a targeted levy on landowners or developers who benefit from the project.
The light rail line could link up with the proposed line to the airport, if it goes ahead. Labour has recently sounded lukewarm on the project and National has promised to scrap it.
National has supported the construction of a second private vehicle Waitamata crossing, although it could choose to opt for a different option should it win the upcoming election.
Waka Kotahi was quoted in the Herald as having projected the tunnels would create a 275% increase in daily public transport trips by 2051, and allow 6,400 people to walk or cycle over the existing bridge.
Cycling advocates have previously petitioned Auckland Transport and Waka Kotahi to allow one lane for active transport, but were told it was not safe.
The twin tunnels would reduce the number of light vehicles using the existing Harbour Bridge by 64% and heavy vehicles by 57%.
Cyclists would be allowed on the existing clip-on lanes and two existing traffic lanes would become dedicated bus lanes.
Carbon emissions would drop by 2.1 million tonnes each year, but not until the light rail was up and running in 2051. That’s 28 years away from today.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said this was a bold plan for Auckland’s future that would connect all parts of the city with modern transport options.
“Under this proposal the network will become joined up, allowing Aucklanders to travel from the north to the south, east and west on public transport - freeing up room on the existing Harbour Bridge and in the new road tunnel for those who want to drive,” he said.
The Harbour Bridge has been frequently closed due to high winds and the access from the North is vulnerable to flooding. Tunnels would help to make the network more resilient.
“We could afford the Harbour Bridge in 1959, when Auckland’s population was only 430,000, so we can afford a second crossing that will modernise transport for the city’s residents and the millions of people who visit every year,” Hipkins said.
The original bridge took four years to build and cost £7,516,000, which would be the equivalent of $414 million today. It was funded with a toll of 25 pence, or $13.79 in today’s money.
57 Comments
The Toll collectors were only on the North Shore. So if it was a one way trip, then you paid twice the odds.
I remember being a very young crew member in the back of the station wagon and being aware of the 1YA news that the Coathanger had already been paid for. Dad said "why are we still chucking 2 and 6 into the goodbye hole?" and then Poof ! A little daylight and freedom of the press and that Malarkey stopped.
I miss a good freedom of the Press.
My what a wonderful vision.
They dont discuss the poulation required to support such a vision but a check of western cities with long tunnels indicates 3 to 10 million people, London, Madrid for example.
Ok, either this is a white elephant or someones planning lots of high density along the routes, certainly more than the Auckland projection I remember of 2 million people.
But hey, its the year of the white elephant....
An arguable need to really go back to questioning a basic premise.
Is the Auckland site the best location for our largest city?
Auckland’s site was selected as it was an ideal port site for servicing both the east coast as well as the Manukau on the west. However it is now widely accepted that the city has outgrown the port and there is valid argument for its relocation.
We are left with a city cut by the Waitematā Harbour creating accessibility issues. In short, the city has outgrown its original intent.
It wouldn’t be the first time that planning for shifting the focus of a major city has occurred. Paris is one example of shift in the business centre. Brasilia and Canberra are two examples of attempts at shifts in focus which have mitigated to some extent the impact on the prime cities.
That's ridiculous for a country with our population. What we really need to do is get medium density right like European cities, that's how you cut commutes, cut C02, improve the ambience of CBD's. Instead our CBD is a no go zone full of bogan's and we have these horrendous cookie cutter "houses" on 250 sqm with enormous commutes and inadequate public transport.
Yes it's fine, and it would still work with a proper rapid transit. The old tram network, for instance, in terms of network coverage, was a vast improvement on literally anything we've come up with to date - the buses don't really count if they're not running.
Ironically the Harbour is drastically underutilised from a transport perspective. Compare to Sydney, with their many ferries, docks and you begin to appreciate how massively fractured our ferry services actually are. Without those, there's no incentive to organise your transport to connect to them. Pull a thread, see how much the whole thing unravels. True, it is a hinderance to some extent, but we've chosen to make far less use of it than we could if we actually really wanted to.
We could do a basic walking, cycling and light rail bridge next to the current one if we really wanted to, for a tenth of the cost of this, as well as double-track light rail up the busway - which was designed for this exact purpose. And yes, we should also set aside a few hundred million to add some new jetties, ferry services and drag the ferries back into the public transport net.
The problem isn't a lack of things we could do in the short term. There is however no desire from politicians to reign in the empire-building types in Wellington who are strangling Auckland with ever-expanding and ever-deferred plans, and who get paid whether anything ever gets built or not.
Yes , they build bus and rail interchanges that look mighty impressive, but actually increase walking distances, and become soulless places. they usually divide a community, whereas a well designed interchange should be the centre of a transit/walking/cycling based neighbourhood. the last thing they should be is surrounded by carparks. Overseas park and rides are usually built near motorway interchanges , not in the centre of a residential neighbourhood.
Perhaps the designers should be made to use the interchange they are building for a month before they are paid.
Even better when the combination surface/tunnel option in the South means you won't actually get the frequency benefits of tunnels at all.
So you get all of the cost but with no capability to run them as often as you need to in order to justify $10s of billions of light rail running in tunnels, and holding up the rollout of rapid transit to the rapidly growing North West.
Unless the whole thing is just enabling works for the thing you actually want to build, which is the tunnel under the harbour.
And boom, just like that, an entire region's transport priorities rail-roaded by one stupid mega-project on a corridor that already has more public transport than most other parts of Auckland have, or are likely to have, for the next 20 years.
Honestly, this city's biggest problem is Wellington.
Still no talk of cable cars...
https://blogs.worldbank.org/latinamerica/cable-cars-economically-viable…
$45 billion. Which is about $100,000 per person living on North Shore or $300,000 per household? Would it be cheaper to just move all North shore residential property to Huntly or Drury or Pokekohe? My 1965 house could just be knocked down and replaced with something modern and warmer.
Its not a good plan but at least its a start and shows how quickly labour and julieanne and work when they need to. Despite all the internal and public ructions in the short time since Michael Wood and PM Chip put forward 5 possible options. It even seemed then that it was thrown out there as a diversion from what was happening within the party at that time. Probably 3 waters come 10 waters
$30b only buying a 'start' when it could pay for rapid transit at surface level all over the whole district. Nah, that's a bad deal. Obsessively linking and relinking the same corridor between the Shore and the CBD when the rest of the city is crying out for access to things like busways - which the Shore had for a decade before everyone else - suggests an obscene amount of leverage that no one part of Auckland should have over all the others.
Why overcook it.... tunnels really..... elsewhere in the world a simple harbour crossing could probably be done and dusted in well under a year for a pittance of the latest proposed costs which we well know will blow out into eternity...Im over all the pie in the sky plans that just keep getting churned out in lil ol NZ....
So how is this new project 110x in cost than the original bridge. I understand it's significantly bigger, but 110x bigger? Either we are
A. Spending far too much on this
B. Money has been devalued far more than the numbers we're given
C. We were able to build for far cheaper even when accounting for inflation
From GA this morning, to give some sense of the scale of this as a 'miss' at a national level:
If we really wanted a “bold plan for Auckland’s future”, for the projected cost of these tunnels and the one planned for the City Centre to Mangere line, you could build about 300km of surface-running light rail all over the region (or indeed the country).
How many new state houses, hospitals, prisons.. could we build for that?
If people have bought a house on the North Shore then they knew the traffic was bad and would get worse - so they need suck it up or have a north shore referrendum and see who is up to fund it if the actual beneficiaries have to pay for their own bridge.
It would be way simpler and cheaper to start a big city between Orewa and Albany and generate local jobs - so people on the shore dont need to use the bridge as much. then build a rail network on the shore to connect everything. Simply run ferries to connect the rail network in the south to the north, until some bright spark invents flying bus drones (wont be far off)
We are simply loading the next generation with more debt and less public services. This whole tunnel project is a nonsense without a real business case.
The whole focus of the political parties and Government departments are all focused on Auckland.
The rest of the country, particularly the South Island are ignored.
It is high time that the South Island seceded.
What are the constitutional ways to achieve this or does it require a violent up rising?
Yes, Auckland as a proper city with a massive infrastructure deficit needs infrastructure to cope with a growing population.
Perhaps if we hadn't been bailing out insurers and rebuilding quake-damaged cities all the time, we'd have had the cash to have it sorted by now. You know how it is.
So if you can just pop us a cheque for our share of the rebuild costs, the underwriting for people who didn't even have insurance and maybe a bit of wash-up for SCF, plus interest, that'd be super and we can be on our way.
I slammed National's announcement so it's only fair I slam Labour's too.
Absolute shambles of a policy. I can't vote National because of Liability Luxon and their housing and transport policies and alignment with Act but I can't vote Labour. Time to seriously read up on the minor parties.
As a long-term Labour voter, I can no longer trust Labour to not immediately put this and all the other desperately needed infrastructure in to the endless cul-de-sacs that are enquiries and consultation, post election, as it would allow them to neatly avoid the need to make a decision on spending money - other than than on consultants - when it doesn't match what increasingly looks like policy built on magical thinking.
Just. Enough. Already.
I remember when Transmission Gully price was seen as too high, they were told to go back and sharpen heir pencils and managed to get the price to under just 1 billion. It did go over that price but now it has finally finished, it looks like a cheap price. The price of these tunnels is getting up to what it cost to rebuild Christchurch after the earthquakes. They can promise anything like his, but don't ever have to deliver.
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