No option will be chosen before 2027, and ministers will directly oversee the next stage.
Three months after the NZ Transport Agency’s board settled on a tunnel for the next Waitemata Harbour crossing, Cabinet has ordered another business case.
The work will be led by a project head recruited internationally, who will answer to the ministers of finance, transport and Auckland, and to Cabinet.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop said on Monday 17 August that the crossing would likely be the largest and most expensive infrastructure project New Zealand has undertaken.
“Previous governments have gone out and announced what they are going to build before they have done the work required around how much it will cost, how they are going to pay for it, and whether the project is deliverable,” Bishop said.
“This Government does not intend to make the same mistake.”
The existing bridge was completed in 1959 and carries 170,000 vehicles a day. Weight restrictions already limit freight and buses.
Major renewals are due in the coming decades, with extended lane closures. Bishop said the economic cost of that disruption, without a second crossing in place, was estimated at about $4.8 billion.
He said the agency’s recent work included the first physical testing on the project, after only desktop studies until then.
“It was fantastic to see a barge in the harbour performing seabed and ground condition testing,” Bishop said.
The Government will also consider an international consortium’s proposal for a new way to upgrade the existing bridge, which officials have recommended be folded into the business case.
More than $106 million has been spent on reports into possible harbour crossings.
Cabinet agreed to commission a study of a crossing at Meola Reef, the route Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has pushed, but only if Auckland Council is interested and pays half the cost.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the study would be capped at $1 million.
“The Meola Reef option has been looked at many times in the past before and discounted as unachievable,” Auckland Minister Simon Watts said.
Brown said the day after the announcement that the option the agency had chosen would “connect a traffic jam with a traffic jam”.
“There’s no sense in what they’re doing, and that’s why we should look at something else,” Brown said.
By 23 August Brown had balked at the study’s price, calling the $1 million figure “ridiculous” and saying he had committed no ratepayer money to it.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the media conference was “an announcement about an announcement about a study about a study”. He said Labour would not cancel the business case if it won the election.
The business case is due in 2027, and Cabinet will decide on an option after that. Bishop indicated construction would then take between five and nine years, possibly longer.
