29 September 2005

Media Release

The Start Of Construction Today On The SH20 Mt Roskill Extension “Is A Great Chance To Get The Western Ring Route Built In One Hit!”

“The bulldozers should not stop working until the whole of the Western Ring Route is completed, including the Avondale and Manukau Harbour crossing links,” said Auckland Chamber of Commerce CEO, Michael Barnett.

While acknowledging that the 4 km Mt Roskill link has a lot of intersections that involve complex construction scheduling to ensure local traffic is not disrupted too much, he said he found it difficult to accept it would take 4 years to build when in Sydney motorway sections of 40km are built in 5 years.

“Auckland has a transport crisis which urgently needs a ‘crisis management’ approach to be solved,” he said. “If Aucklanders knew the job could be finished sooner, I am confident they would wear the additional disruption – they are being disrupted anyway because we don’t have a proper network, so let’s get the job done as fast as possible,” he said.

“I see lots of reasons why the other three sections required to complete the Western Ring Route should be built at the same time as the Mt Roskill section and the whole job done in 8 years.”

The money to get the job done is no longer a problem, and Government is now saying they can do the whole job within 10 years, against the 15 years of a few months ago.

“Let’s see if we can get it done even faster!” Every year we fail to complete the corridor, we lose the benefit of the more than $830m GDP growth a year that will be generated by Auckland having a completed western ring route.

ENDS

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