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Auckland Transport has awarded the first major AMETI Panmure contract, for replacement of Mountain Road Bridge, to Downer New Zealand Ltd.
The works involve realigning Mountain Road to the east to meet Jellicoe Road and replacing the rail bridge.
The $8.85 million contract includes:
- replacement of the Mountain Road Bridge
- construction of a temporary Park and Ride
- demolition of buildings along Ellerslie Panmure Highway
- construction of new services trench under rail line
- work on the Panmure rail station platforms
- relocation of services.
Construction is due to begin in November this year, with completion expected in July 2012.
Auckland Transport Major Projects Manager Rick Walden says the start of physical works on site will be a significant milestone for Auckland Transport and the Panmure community.
“The Mountain Road Bridge works are a critical component of the first phase of AMETI Panmure. Key elements of the project will be completed during Kiwirail’s annual rail line closure this Christmas, to ensure the next stage of works can be constructed safely and with minimum disruption to the travelling public.”
Downer New Zealand Project Manager, Nigel McCreight says: “Downer are delighted to be involved right from the beginning of this exciting project and look forward to starting work within the Panmure community.”
Auckland Transport expects to award the contract for the remainder of AMETI Panmure Phase One works by the New Year. Phase One includes the creation of an enhanced transport interchange at Panmure and a new road to take pressure off Panmure roundabout before a new intersection is built.
Key AMETI Panmure Phase One components are:
- Realigning Mountain Rd east to meet Jellicoe Rd and replacing the rail bridge
- A new connector road from Glen Innes in the north to Mt Wellington Highway in the south, passing under the Ellerslie Panmure highway and mountain road. A large covered box will be created in the Panmure Station area to accommodate this new road.
- Major upgrades at Panmure Station to create a transport interchange with stops for the proposed new urban busway
- Widening Morrin Rd to four lanes between Fraser and Tainui roads.
12 Comments
How ridiculous. A massive highway that ends up in the middle of Glen Innes.
It does seem a bit over the top. What about improving the local bus services in the area to encoirage people to take the bus to work/school (which the current bus route network fails to do since it’s designed to whisk people to/from the CBD) and setting up better connections between the trains and buses. To this day I still don’t understand why Howick and Eastern makes their passenger suffer a 45-60min bus ride into the city when they could just terminate their buses at Panmure Station and passengers transfer to the trains.
Going to sound like a broken record but that Eastern Highway (Sub Regional Option according to the EASTDOR Proposal (2002)) would have been better for both private, public and freight transport…
James, because H&E benefit financially from carrying passengers the entire distance, and because to do so under current fare structuring would result in a financial penalty for the passengers through being forced to transfer mode when there’s no integrated fare system.
Once HOP has been rolled out across all modes and carriers, integrated fares have been introduced and restructured into zones, and the service providers are on a gross free model, then we can look at doing away with the redundancy of buses running all the way from Howick to the CBD and thus duplicating a rail corridor for much of the journey.
This project is the start of the wider main AMETI programme which will commence early next year. The tendering process is underway now.
Stage 1 will include a new road around the back of Harvey Normans etc and will provide a new rapid transit network for the buses and the like.
Good to see AKL transport finaling kicking this one off.
is there a gag here about the Ametiville Horror?
The AMETI Road (north-south) indeed is a road project first and foremost (though it will get some pretty sweet bike lanes and bike paths - off-road! - too).
But the key is that once it is in place, Panmure Roundabout can be removed, and a west-east busway be put in place.
Without the new north-south road, there is no way, the busway could be built, or the roundabout be removed, without serious gridlock all over the area. And even if you think politicians should accept such gridlock to discourage car traffic (uhm….) you’d find that all it would do is trap buses as badly as cars.
No, the project is pretty good, balance wise - having been in close contact with the designers over months, I think I can say that. There’s actually quite a bit of PT and cycling and walking stuff happening here.
But since right now, the area is extremely car-centric, even for Auckland, they HAVE to ensure car traffic can still flow at least at current levels, or this project would never get off the ground.
“A massive highway that ends up in the middle of Glen Innes.”
The orange bit is not planned for 5-10 years more, and the main traffic flow is to bypass Glen Innes to the northwest anyway. The initial stage (yellow road in map) will be a ONE lane in each direction, 50 km/h road, that is planned to be widened later (10+ years) to 2 lanes, but still at 50 km/h.
Not a highway, really.
5 years is still very soon, 10 is soon enough. And it’s still a plan for a 4 lane highway across an area which really has little current demand (I drive those roads regularly, including in peak hour).
Great to read this is getting under way.
Would it work for a temporary PT fix to paint the outside lanes of the Pakuranga Highway and Te Rakau Drive as bus lanes? With bus priority traffic lights to get the eastern burbs moving with the implementation of integrated ticketing & the Panmure train station?
How does the Panmure Roundabout have “very little demand”? I’d also disagree with the statement that Mt Wellington Highway northwards and Jellicoe Street, have “little current demand”. Jellicoe Street had 22,000 vehicles a day in 2004 (!) which was the latest data I could find.
I stand by my comment that short of screwing the local roading environment , they could not build the busway otherwise. There is enough grumbling already by people who don’t think any busway is needed. So they would be stupid to cause traffic havoc and premature project death by not taking that seriously.
DanC - the response to your proposal is similar: Sure it would help, but since the space would generally come from cars, at the moment is isn’t really considered feasible politically, I would say.
It is all nice for us to say “Politicians should get a spine and just do it, people will see afterwards that it worked”. These projects take YEARS to be built. Meaning that your whole next election period might be over before the benefits happen. So they have to walk carefully, and make sure they don’t screw it up, or the next crop of politicians will have been elected BECAUSE they promised to treat car drivers better than the last bunch.
That’s Auckland, folks. Change doesn’t come here easily. It takes careful work.
Max
You only have to look at the CHCH rebuild to realise that the wheels in motion are slow to turn