Road will need upgrade if tunnel proceeds

The Queenstown to Glenorchy road will need significant safety improvements to cope with dozens more tour buses and hundreds more cars and campervans each day, if a proposed train and tunnel link to Milford proceeds.

The Milford Sound Rail Link plan, unveiled on Wednesday, envisages a roll-on, roll-off electric train running from the Dart River bridge, near Glenorchy, to Gunns Camp in the Hollyford Valley.

The 600-tonne train could carry 10 coaches and 20 other vehicles, to a maximum of 500 people, on each return journey, with up to 10 return trips daily planned for peak holiday periods.

Tourists would be expected to drive the Queenstown-Glenorchy road, and negotiate several narrow single-lane sections along the way before boarding the train, and drive back again on the return journey.

The train would offer an alternative route for some of the 1200 vehicles using the Milford road each day during peak holiday periods, and would cut roundtrip travel times, but would also add to the 872 vehicles already using the Queenstown-Glenorchy road daily at peak periods.

Transit regional network manager Murray Clarke, of Dunedin, yesterday told the Otago Daily Times the Queenstown-Glenorchy road was ‘‘well below'' the standard required to cope with such a significant increase in traffic.

‘‘It's all solid, but once you start putting significant amounts of traffic on that, it's relatively narrow and there will be an expectation it will be like a state highway,'' he said.

Queenstown Lakes District Council engineering general manager Mark Kunath confirmed road improvements, including widening, resealing and safety work, would be needed to accommodate extra traffic if the MSRL project proceeded.

The road might even need to be transferred to Transit's management, by reclassifying it as a state highway, if the project proceeded, he said.

However, the council was taking a ‘‘wait and see'' approach before committing to any upgrade, he said.

‘‘There's been a lot of proposals [to link Queenstown and Milford] over the years and none of them have come to fruition. At this particular point in time, we are focusing on our projects we know are going to come to life,'' he said.

The Queenstown-Glenorchy road's ‘‘special purpose'' classification would also mean the council would receive a 75% subsidy from Land Transport New Zealand for any upgrade, lowering the financial burden on the community, he said.

MSRL chief executive and director Greg Harris, of Christchurch, said, when contacted yesterday, discussions with the QLDC would be held in coming weeks, but as yet there were no plans to offer a contribution towards the cost of upgrading the road.

‘‘That's something that will be coming out in the RMA [Resource Management Act] process,'' he said.

The company was budgeting to seal a 7km stretch of gravel road linking Gunns Camp, near the train's proposed Milford portal and State Highway 94, and could also seal a small section of gravel road between the Dart River bridge and train tunnel portal, he said.

The project would improve road safety by cutting round-trip driving time between Queenstown and Milford Sound from 12 to four hours, he believed.

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