You have until Friday to get your feedback in
I have sent my feedback in opposing the entire East West Connections proposal by both NZTA and Auckland Transport. I will put what I sent to both authorities into this post.
But first from Cycling Action Auckland:
No thanks – no Onehunga Foreshore highway!
CAA will strongly oppose the proposed project, and we need everyone to also clearly speak out against it. And this time we want AT and NZTA to clearly state who and how many support or oppose their scheme – it is not acceptable to again summarise opposition in the style of “some people have voiced concerns”.
Voice your opposition directly to: eastwest@nzta.govt.nz
Yes, their website does have a feedback form – but it concentrates on an only somewhat related bus proposal south of the harbour, and doesn’t even provide fields to enter your opinion on this highway scheme. (Despite them clearly asking for feedback on this too, and despite this being the much more controversial project!).
So please, tell them your thoughts on this directly, by email. Ideally, give them your name and address as well, so they know it’s real people disliking these concepts.
Ten reasons to oppose this proposal:
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Link and Source: http://caa.org.nz/no-thanks-no-onehunga-foreshore-highway/
The feedback I gave NZTA and Auckland Transport:
To NZTA
- Gold-plated excess – the desired goals can be largely achieved by prioritising and upgrading Neilson / Church for trucks instead
- Enormous opportunity cost – for the 1 billion this is likely to cost, we could build half the City Rail Link, or all of Auckland’s planned cycle network
- Loss of access to the harbour – for the forseeable future, our lives and beyond. Four lanes of fast traffic between people and the bay
- Destroys coastal foreshore – And if the mudflats don’t look healthy or special to you now, remember these were industrial dumping grounds for many decades. We should be healing these lands, not asphalting over them
- Induces new traffic – like all roadsfest pojects, after 5-10 years it will create just as much new traffic (by making driving easier) as it tries to shift away from other roads. Building new roads to fight congestion is like letting out your belt to fight obesity!
- Land contamination risks – the foreshore and the mudflats of the inlet have sections heavily laced with old toxins from former industries – is the necessary remediation cost included?
- Endangers rail to the airport – the new motorway needs to connect to SH20 under and around the Mangere Bridge, taking up the space between the existing motorway bridge and the water – making extension of the rail line somewhere between near impossible and much more costly
- Will lead to further costly projects down the line – if this project is approved, you can be sure that calls for another couple hundred million for more lanes and bridges from Sylvia Park to Pakuranga will follow to “complete the link” and “make efficient use” of this new project.
- No improvements for other roads – a typical claim of new projects like this is that it will take traffic off other roads, making life nicer and conditions safer. But the project doesn’t include new footpaths or cycleways north of the new road. Sure, if traffic volumes drop there, Auckland Transport could build better footpaths or cycleways – but they have little money for this, and this project doesn’t commit to any such works
- Options A and B (which I supported) were more viable and beneficial to the traffic situation of the Onehunga-Southdown Industrial Complex
- The land use for the complex is not even certain with strong belief most of the area owing to population pressures will be converted to residential and supporting commercial. This is because heavy industry is both incompatible with residential and commercial while being intolerable to high land prices. That is heavy industry will move when land prices are high to areas where land prices are cheaper (so Wiri, Takanini, Drury South, and Glenbrook)
- The motorway will cut off Onehunga to the foreshore of the Mangere Inlet to the rest of the urban fabric REGARDLESS if it is industrial now or residential in 30 years time
clearly state who and how many support or oppose their scheme – as it is not acceptable to again summarise opposition in the style of “some people have voiced concerns”
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Talking Southern Auckland 