The money, time and traffic orbiting Labour's new harbour crossing plan have local and central politicians alike shaking their heads
A $35 to $45 billion investment in Auckland’s transport infrastructure announced by the Labour Government just two months out from the general election has struggled to find its intended audience.
The immense multi-decade plan has something for everyone on the North Shore – it would take mass transit all the way up to Albany, while providing extra traffic lanes across the harbour and finally allowing cyclists and pedestrians to cross the bridge.
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But in trying to please everybody, has Labour managed to leave anybody particularly happy?
Greek fabulist Aesop spoke of a man with two mistresses, one his junior and one his senior.
To make him look closer to her in age, the younger would pluck out his grey hairs while he slept. The older would do the same thing for the same reason, but plucking out his darker hairs.
Eventually, he was left bald.
It’s a story that comes to mind as North Shore councillor Chris Darby explains his stance on the plan.
“They're trying to placate everybody,” he said. “They’re trying to win every possible voter.”
Darby is the council’s representative on the Auckland Transport board, after the controversial ousting of Mike Lee last month.
He’s long been abreast of the myriad plans to cross the harbour again, and said the light rail plan mirrored his own ideas from a decade back.
But while there were aspects of the plan he advocates as North Shore councillor – pushing Takapuna as a transport hub, and taking routes through Glenfield and North Harbour – he said it had a fatal flaw.
“It’s got a fundamental fail in that it doesn't put rapid transit as the key development,” he said. “It says the first of two road tunnels will go first – now that is not where the growth is, the growth is the insatiable appetite to climb aboard the Northern Busway.”
He said the Northern Busway, with its steadily growing ridership expected to top 21 million per year by 2038, was the most successful transport project in the country.
“So the real driver is to satisfy the demand to take public transport and to complement the busway,” he said.
But the priority given to roading has him harbouring doubts on the new harbour crossing.
“This is a very complex beast.
“When you create more roads, you create more driving,” he said. “Just 1.5 percent of the vehicle fleet in New Zealand is EV, in 10 years maybe that’s 20 percent ... I would say that Government’s proposal here is one of the most significant carbon generating projects that I’ve ever seen in New Zealand and it's not of this time.”
Darby has shared Mayor Wayne Brown’s view Auckland Council should be involved in big decisions made by central government.
Brown was disdainful of having been left largely out of the plan, comparing the relationship between local and central government with slavery on RNZ on Monday morning: “It's partnership in the same way that the guy that owns the cotton fields is in partnership with the slaves.”
The mayor said Auckland still had large infrastructure costs hanging over its head such as the nearly finished City Rail Link and the yet-to-be considered project of railway crossing renewals.
He called the plan part of a “long going interference in Auckland by Wellington politicians and their idiot bureaucrat mates”, and an election promise unlikely to happen.
Neither the mayor nor Darby were invited to the announcement at Auckland’s waterfront on Sunday.
The plan has drawn ire from both sides of the political spectrum, with the National Party questioning Labour’s ability to deliver and the huge cost, and the Greens saying transport investment shouldn’t prioritise car travel.
Greens transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter described the two proposed motorway tunnels as “pouring fuel on the fire of an already overheating planet”.
“The Prime Minister says money doesn’t grow on trees, but apparently it does grow on roads,” she said.
Meanwhile, National criticised the progress and costing of the current light rail project.
National transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said Aucklanders couldn't ride on a ghost train, asking Transport Minister David Parker when a route would be confirmed for light rail as it stood.
“Rather than make those decisions, Labour is now promising to extend light rail to the North Shore,” he said. “Labour has no idea how the plans will be funded, leaving a nearly $60 billion hole in its transport policy.”
National doesn't seem opposed to the tunnels in principle, with Brown saying the party would look closely at them.
For them it's the cost and the timeframe, while for the Greens it's the encouragement of car use.
Pleasing everybody may have pleased nobody.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said reducing congestion required improvements to both roading and public transport, giving the public choice.
“This is a bold plan for Auckland’s future that delivers a modern transport network that will connect all parts of the city,” he said.
Labour MP Shanan Halbert is running in Northcote, where a second harbour crossing could change life in several suburbs.
Speaking last month, he said having a plan for each part of the puzzle and making sure people had a choice in how they got around were paramount.
He said handling congestion was important in the short term, while cheaper public transport and the harbour crossing work were the key long-term goals.
But in his electorate, bumper-to-bumper traffic on off-ramps like Onewa Road is a common bugbear.
Darby wondered whether adding private vehicle lanes to the system would just push congestion out to further chokepoints, such as the off-ramps just north of the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
If Halbert and team have a plan to handle congestion before the new lanes drop, this could well be avoided. But at the same time it seems many Aucklanders are sceptical about long-term plans uninsulated from the turbulence of the election cycle by bipartisan agreements.
The North Shore is projected to be the size of Hamilton in a decade, and one thing every partisan could perhaps agree on is a surefire solution to congestion and carbon emissions would surely win votes.
Labour has just over two months to sell the idea to a city often unconvinced about big infrastructure projects.
