Fumes already rising from new toll highway

As Wellingtonians seethe over Transmission Gully, Aucklanders are building themselves a dramatic exit out of the city, but as Michael Field reports, it has the look of a road to nowhere.
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North of Auckland, a radical short turnpike, complete with tunnels and green-washed so that bridges become "eco-viaducts", is under construction.

Open late next year costing $360 million – about $480 a centimetre – it leads to nowhere in particular.

Low on the national roading priorities, it only got the go-ahead when it was agreed that about $160 million would come from tolls; $2 for a car, $4 for a truck to cover just 7.5 kilometres.

Critic Dr Hans Grueber says up to 75 per cent of the toll will be spent administering the toll.

"It is madness. It is horrendous and all that money just to move traffic jams seven kilometres to the north," he said.

Transit's northern region manager, Peter Spies, estimates administration will cost only about 32 cents per car. He says debt will be repaid within 35 years.

"The 35-year period is appropriate and everybody is confident."

"Alpurt B2" – for the "Albany to Puhoi Realignment" – is an appendage to Auckland's northern motorway, taking State Highway 1 out of the coastal towns of Orewa, Waiwera and Hatfield's Beach and rugged terrain.

It cuts through Otanerua Valley – part of the only coast to coast forest belt left in the North Island – which is home to the semi-flightless fernbird, North Island robin, green and forest native geckos and at least seven species of native freshwater fish.

The four-lane motorway will cut 10 minutes off travel time from Auckland to the double lane Tiford's Bridge and Puhoi, known for its cheese factory and its quaint Czech settlement of about 450 people.

To Dr Grueber, a retired lawyer and Rodney mayoral candidate, Alpurt exists because Auckland decision-makers have summer homes further north and yachts in the Bay of Islands. But, he says, they will just find themselves sitting in another traffic jam and paying a toll for it.

"If you open the roads, all you are doing is moving the traffic backlog seven kilometres further north," he said. "Can you imagine people paying tolls, then being stuck in the tunnel, or on the bridges, because the same thing will just happen a little further north."

Mr Spies agrees there could be traffic jams. "It's the nature of the New Zealand scene. Queues on motorways in Auckland and Wellington are almost a rite of passage."

Longer term, Transit is looking to running the motorway another 15 kilometres to Warkworth and another 18km to Wellsford.

The key is the annual eight to 10 per cent population growth on the east coast at Matakana, Omaha and other coastal hideaways. People were living there and commuting occasionally to Auckland apartments.

Mr Spies said: "We are not building a road for holiday-makers to get up to their baches. There is a very substantial growth of traffic between Auckland and Northland."

Dr Grueber, who lives near one of the huge new bridges, serves on a "reference group" set up by the Northern Gateway Alliance, which combines Transit New Zealand with contractors.

"Overall it is ecological vandalism," he says. "On the other hand they are trying their best to do the least damage. They give it nice words." Trees have been left standing and steams and culverts have been handled so as not to disturb the native fish while birds can have largely uninterrupted passage from Tasman to Pacific.

"Out of it all, a bridge turns into an eco- viaduct, which is all green-wash."

Alpurt's most dramatic features are its two 350 metre tunnels which plunge through the sandstone of Johnstone Hill. The southern end of the tunnels connect directly to one of the "eco-viaducts", one of three designed to fly over forest without damaging it, although with no footpaths or cycleways much of it will go unnoticed.

Project engineer Alistair McPhee built the Johnstone tunnels by machine.

Lessons from European tunnel fires have been absorbed. A farmhouse on Johnstone Hill will be replaced with a 9000 cubic metre water tank. If fire detectors and videos at Transit's Auckland Harbour Bridge centre detect fire in the tunnel, it will be doused with water.

The tunnels are two wide lanes each, but are "future proofed", Mr McPhee says, and can have a third.

"The whole motorway has been geometrically designed for 100 kilometres per hour."

They are the first North Island road tunnels built in 30 years; the last was Wellington's Terrace Tunnel.

Alpurt is the first state highway project to be brought forward by tolling, as enabled under the Land Transport Management Act 2003.

A Swedish company has won the contract to provide licence plate scanning on the tollway. Regular users can buy transponders to automatically pay the toll while casual users will be told to go to a PostShop with their licence plate number and pay it there.

Those that don't pay will be tracked down using their registration details and sent a bill for the toll, plus an administration fee.

For Dr Grueber, the toll is an election issue and he promises that if elected, Rodney County will seek a judicial review.

"What they are doing is creating a new revenue collecting system for road building," he says, claiming that the actual administration and collection cost will range from 50 to 70 per cent.

The country already had a perfectly cheap and working system for road funding; petrol tax. Collection costs are unchanged if the rate goes up.

"The whole toll idea is mad, unless you see the rationale behind it and if you ask why are intelligent people promoting it, why does one need an extra revenue collection system out of roads, you will only come to one conclusion; if you can make money out of roads, then you can sell them, it's a prerequisite for privatising our roads.

"They are setting up the system to flog off the roads later."