Expect crawling on the highway

ANDREW GORRIE/The Dominion Post

ALL CLEAR FOR NOW: The jammed coastal route out of Wellington, with two-hour delays at peak periods, was a further indication about how astute the transport minister was with timing of the Transmission Gully go-ahead, writes Richard Long.

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OPINION: The annual summer holiday motoring crawl out of Wellington (and back) is over once again for many of us. But don't relax just yet. The ordeal is likely to continue for the next 12 to 15 years, till the new Transmission Gully highway is operational.

The jammed coastal route, with two-hour delays at peak periods, was a further indication about just how astute Transport Minister Steven Joyce was with his pre-Christmas timing of the Transmission Gully go-ahead.

The route has been touted, off and on, for 68 years (if we count the romantic legend about the Marines wanting to bulldoze it through when they arrived in 1942). Assorted transport ministers over the years have called for reports, shelved them, dissembled and generally ducked for cover.

A correspondent on this page last week recalled a Paremata delegation to the transport minister half a  century ago, which the minister greeted by flourishing papers declaring them to be the final approved plans for the Gully route.

Accordingly, Mr Joyce's commitment, after just a year in office, was greeted with rapturous applause in Wellington.

However, his beatification should wait till after completion. Governments rarely last longer than three terms and this new billion-dollar northern outlet is unlikely to be operational in that time.

Work is scheduled to start ''within 10 years'' - a deliberately vague timeframe as nobody can predict times on the consenting process. The project is expected to take five to seven years to complete after work starts.

Critics raise doubts about the benefit-to-cost ratio, but here Mr Joyce has demonstrated his craftiness once  again, applying the ratio to the entire Levin-to-Wellington-airport project, and not just the costly Transmission Gully section.

Rob Whight, state highway manager Wellington, is credited with dramatically paring costs on the gully route,  making it much less expensive than the coastal route upgrade, which was the tipping point.

In any case, some experts consider the coastal route to be practically unconsentable because of early Maori settlements in the area and the need to cantilever sections of the highway over the sea.

Clinging to the coast, like the parallel rail line, and in the shadow of unstable cliffs of rotten rock, the coastal arteries leave Wellington vulnerable to natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunamis. After Transmission Gully, at least there will be another option, although that, too, crosses the fault line.

Mr Whight, known in the business as Mr Transmission Gully because of his intimacy with the project over the years, says extra surveys of the route gave him the information required to switch the road alignment to the other side of the valley.

This enabled engineers to strike rock foundations more quickly, and removed a series of costly bridges and viaducts.

* * *

Even truckies seem to be more relaxed now about the prospects of the Transmission Gully route, in spite of  the steep gradient at the northern end - as steep as Ngauranga Gorge and twice as long (not, as some Green spokespeople have maintained, twice as steep as Ngauranga and three times as long).

Earlier it was argued that many truckies would stick to the coastal route to avoid the steep gradients of Transmission Gully and the prospects of a toll.

Now the Road Transport Forum's Tony Friedlander says the continuing improvement in trucks, and the improved route through the Gully, has changed this attitude.

A prohibitive toll would be a problem, he acknowledges, as it could distort traffic patterns by encouraging traffic back to the coastal route. Mr Whight says the Government is aware of this. Any toll would be subject to discussion with interested parties and the charge would be modelled to ensure it was not too much of a  disincentive.

As a scenic highway with dramatic vistas, the coastal route will continue to attract tourists, as well as locals. The problem for residents is that their road will cease to be the state highway once Transmission Gully opens, which means that they will have to pay a share of the costs of maintenance and development.

That means we can probably kiss goodbye to planned improvements, such as the costly Pukerua Bay bypass.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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