Joyce wants early start for new harbour crossing

Transport Minister Steven Joyce says he expects construction on a new crossing of Auckland's Waitemata Harbour to start in the next 10 to 20 years.

The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) yesterday said that current strengthening work on Auckland Harbour Bridge's clip-on lanes would only add 20 years of life to the bridge before extra management measures were needed.

It has prompted NZTA to issue notices of requirement to Auckland City Council and North Shore City Council to protect a route for two road and two rail tunnels underneath the harbour.

That route, between Esmonde Rd on the North Shore and Victoria Park in the city, needed protection to ensure development plans for the "tank farm" area at Wynyard Quarter in the city would not get in the way of tunnels.

NZTA Auckland and Northland state highways manager Tommy Parker said building a new bridge instead of tunnels had not been ruled out but it made sense to protect the route now for the tunnels, NZTA's preferred option.

Mr Joyce said he didn't regard the work as immediately urgent but the restricted life of the current bridge made the route protection prudent.

"But it does suggest that as I expected that between 10 and 20 years out, we'll be needing to be constructing the third harbour crossing," he told Radio New Zealand.

"Too often in this business you end up with corridors that aren't reserved -- we're dealing with that at Waterview (for the final piece of the western ring route) at the moment -- so it's good that they've moved ahead to do that."

However, he said there was no need to start immediately as the strengthening work -- which has blown out in cost from $45 million to $86 million -- would keep the bridge going in the meantime.

"The Auckland Harbour Bridge as it is today is not the restricting factor on the network," he said.

"Victoria Park, which we're currently building the tunnel under, that's the restricting factor on SH1 and the lack of an alternative ring route around the city is the other restricting factor in terms of getting around transport issues in Auckland."

Mr Joyce said there was merit in both a bridge, expected to cost $3 billion, and tunnels, which would be another $500,000 million, but he said both would be along the existing corridor and would not go west of the current bridge.

North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams said a tunnel would be a better option than a bridge, saying it was an international trend and the cost of tunnelling was reducing.

But Barney Irvine of the Anzac centenary bridge group said other significant economic benefits would result from a bridge via tourism and from released real estate when the existing bridge was removed.

Mr Joyce said he wasn't too worried about the near-doubling of the cost of the strengthening work.

"To be fair to the agency, it's one of those projects where it's not until you're actually on the job and stripping back and looking at the steel work required and adding to that that you get the full extent of it," he said.

"Having said that, I would have liked to have heard about it earlier."