A month ago, at the last Waterview Project CLG (that’s “Community Liaison Group” for those who have NOT spent about 20 evenings over the last years attending these…), the project leader from Auckland Transport provided an overview of the current state of the project. You can view a short presentation he gave here.
The bad news is that it may take up to 2017 for the cycleway to be open. This is 6 years since the funding was approved. Not fast, whatever way you look at it. AT are promising that they will be running some processes in parallel, hoping to speed up the post-consent preparations and maybe have it open by 2016. The Well Connected Alliance, who are already building the tunnel, is understood to take on the job of building it, so they are already on-site and should be able to get right onto it. Knock on wood.
The good news is that the design is pretty advanced for the remaining approvals that are needed, and we understand there has finally been agreement reached on the location of the “Alford Bridge” (from Waterview over to the Unitec side), which had created some difficulties intially to fit it in with the potential development plans for the Unitec area.
Some land purchases in the Phyllis Reserve area and negotiations with affected neighbours at Soljak Bridge are proceeding, with mitigation and compensation (where required).
