24 November 2004

“Yes” To Harbour Tunnel Without Delay, But In The Right Place.

Michael Barnett, chief executive of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, said the huge growth of business traffic that is occurring between rapidly expanding commercial centres on the North Shore, east and south Auckland, is giving some urgency to the case for the region to develop an alternative option for getting across Waitemata Harbour.

“We need to apply our minds to a far sighted proposal that integrates a crossing, probably a tunnel, with the rest of the network and with capability to meet future public transport needs,” said Mr Barnett.

He was responding to Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard’s support at a Business Leaders’ breakfast for a tunnel under the Waitemata Habour to provide a strategic option to the Harbour Bridge.

Transit New Zealand has undertaken an engineering feasibility of two options, a crossing close to the existing bridge and another further east.

“What is clearly now needed is a full transport feasibility for a third crossing that assumes the currently agreed basic network has been built,” said Mr Barnett.

“Let’s use the opportunity to do a proper job. The first bridge built in the 1960’s soon needed “clip on” lanes to meet demand; we are widening the southern motorway before we have built the rest of the planned network, and in particular the western bypass. The eastern corridor is in limbo.

“A third harbour crossing ‘makes sense’ only if integrated with a transport vision for Auckland’s growth needs for the next century and beyond,” he concluded.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>