Grafton Gully’s Wellesley Street Bridge Opening Brings Home The Huge Scale Of Auckland’s Transport Infrastructure
Shortfall
At last! Today’s opening by Transport Minister Paul Swain of the Wellesley Street Bridge over the motorway extension
down Grafton Gully is concrete proof of progress to reduce gridlock in central Auckland.
While the bridge by itself represents a very small step forward, business will welcome today’s ceremony as the first
step in the Grafton Gully project to improve motorway traffic access to major destinations in the central business
district and port areas.
Michael Barnett, chief of executive of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, praised Transit New Zealand’s management of the
project, both for its care to ensure business traffic was not unduly disturbed during construction and for getting the
project completed ahead of schedule.
Noting that the Grafton Gully project is “lucky – it has been funded” and that there are at least another 10 un-funded
projects worth a billion dollars of opportunity that could be underway in coming months if money was made available, Mr
Barnett urged Minister Swain to have urgent talks with his colleague Finance Minister Michael Cullen.
"While I strongly applaud the progress that Transit NZ has made in the past two years to speed up completion of the
motorway network, under current drip-fed funding arrangements it will be another 30-40 years before planned projects are
finished.
“That state of affairs is simply unacceptable for a city that contributes a third of New Zealand’s productivity and
wants to keep growing.
“With Government’s surplus now a record $5.6 billion - $1.5 billion higher than predicted in the April budget – the
economic and political climate could not be better to give Auckland a kick start contribution and ability to borrow and
roll Auckland’s strategic roading and public transport infrastructure provision into a single fully funded project aimed
at completion within 10 years," concluded Mr Barnett.