Co-leader James Shaw said the government seemed to have a tendency to choose the most expensive and over-engineered plans possible.
“I don’t think that six lanes of traffic are going to solve Auckland’s congestion problem. Frankly, during a climate crisis it’s a bit bonkers to be building more roads and inducing more traffic and more car dependency.”
Shaw said at the very least, the light rail tunnel should be built first to reduce congestion, and indicate what roading demand there is.
Why don’t we bring in experts from countries that are great at building and designing efficient transport infrastructure? We should never prioritise cars.
Also, we should penalise politicians who don’t deliver their promises.
I kinda respect the “snooze you lose” approach to infrastructure by National, actually. It incentivises moving fast and getting shit done before the other guys get in.
In 20-30 years, there are going to be a low fewer cars on the road than there are now (one way or another)… so these grand roading infrastructure projects really don’t make sense
Do any of these plans allow for the harbor bridge being taken out of commission altogether? It’s a pretty old structure at this point, and will likely need to be demolished entirely, or perhaps have the clip-ons removed, at some point.
Take out the road crossings, and take out the Light Rail tunnel from North Shore to Albany (instead convert the Northern Buswsy to Light Rail). With an improved PT corridor, you should expect to see less demand for the additional road crossing, and we should be thinking about more climate friendly options.
And the Light Rail plan from CBD to Mangere should be on the surface along Dominion Road. I don’t get the obsession with tunnels. They are expensive and more difficult to access.
The light rail tunnel to Albany seems mad to me, I thought the northern busway was designed to accommodate light rail so I can’t understand why one would build tunnels to Albany instead of putting light rail along the current busway corridor.
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