Auckland mayoral election: John Tamihere's policy man says his double-decker bridge plan is 'no Trump Tower'

Wednesday, 28 August 2019

A look back at the history of the Auckland Harbour Bridge as it celebrates its 60th anniversary. (First published in May 2019)

Dismissing Auckland mayoral hopeful John Tamihere's harbour bridge proposal as 'a fantasy' is, in itself, a fantasy.

That is according to the man behind the plan – Tamihere campaign policy advisor Will McKenzie, who has been working on the double-decker design since 2014.

Debate has raged since Tamihere announced his bridge plan earlier in August. The challenger believes it can be built in six years, while incumbent Phil Goff says the project is 'fantasy stuff and fundamentally dishonest to promise'.

Designs envisage 10 lanes of traffic on a lower level and eight lanes for light rail, walking and cycling on the upper level.

John Tamihere has announced his transport policy in his run for the Auckland mayoralty. (Video first published in August 2019)

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* Auckland Harbour Bridge to balloon to 18 lanes under John Tamihere's proposal**

'You guys think that Tamihere's some fantasist,' McKenzie told Stuff.

'The idea that that bridge proposal is a fantasy, is a fantasy.'

McKenzie believed the bridge proposal was actually straight forward, calling the design 'a conventional, stock-standard, boring engineer's thing'.

Incumbent Phil Goff says mayoral challenger John Tamihere's bridge plan is a fantasy and a dishonest promise to Auckland ratepayers.

One engineer had told him the design was 'not only feasible, it's not even difficult'.

'And you guys go around talking like he wants to build the Trump Tower in horizontal position,' McKenzie said.

'They do this all the time – I've sat in the office of the guys that do this over in the States.

'He said to me as long as the foundation's sound, the superstructure you can do anything you want with.'

The layout of the two-level harbour crossing proposed by mayoral challenger John Tamihere, to be built on the existing bridge piers.

McKenzie produced a letter from Auckland University Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Dr Charles Clifton.

The plan was 'feasible', Clifton opined, but would come with 'significant challenges'.

John Tamihere while announcing his mayoral campaign with would-be deputy mayor Christine Fletcher. Tamihere wants to make Auckland Harbour Bridge a double-decker.

Tamihere's plan would essentially replace the existing Auckland Harbour Bridge structure, while retaining its piers.

His team compared the proposal to the Milton-Madison Bridge, across the Ohio River in the United States.

That bridge is a two-lane link with a shared walking and cycling shoulder. A new replacement structure was built alongside the original bridge and slid into place on the existing foundation in 2014.

'My mayoralty is bringing solutions to quite significant and at times intractable processes – you've got to start somewhere and head down that track, extra work has to be done,' Tamihere said when unveiling his design.

However, critics, including Goff, have been quick to savage the plan.

'Either he [Tamihere], intends to bankrupt the city, burden ratepayers with massive extra rates or he is making it up because he knows he is never going to deliver it,' Goff said.

'Widening the motorway at either end to match the 18 lanes would see massive demolition of buildings and destruction of homes and neighbourhoods. This will cost further billions of dollars that Auckland doesn't have and the Government won't pay for.'

University of Auckland Civil Engineering senior lecturer Dr Rick Henry said the proposal was theoretically possible, but was likely to cause huge disruption and be very costly.

'Multi-level bridges with both vehicles and trains have been implemented successfully overseas,' he said.

'However, replacing the existing superstructure without causing massive disruption to the daily commuter traffic would be almost impossible.'

AUT University engineering Professor John Tookey described Tamihere's idea as a 'classic silver bullet solution' that was likely to come to nothing.