Leftfield Bridge - a proposal borne from frustration

With protracted discussion and debate around a second harbour crossing for Tāmaki Makaurau – a team from Reset Urban has set about coming up with its own solution.

After years of leading the Skypath proposal for cycling and walking across the Auckland Harbour Bridge only to have it scrapped and official talk increasingly turning to adopting a tunnel concept, the team decided it was time to come up with a new concept.

Reset Urban’s Leftfield Bridge proposal.

The team, made up of Garth Falconer, James Paxton and Janet Zhang say there is little argument that an additional Waitematā crossing is vital to “not only provide greater resilience but also to expand the city’s movement capacity and options whilst fitting poetically in with sweeping harbour-scape of the Waitematā.

They note walking and cycling access across the central harbour has been denied ever since the slimmed down version of the Auckland Harbour Bridge opened in 1959.

The team says there is little argument that an additional Waitematā crossing is vital.

Their solution? The Leftfield Bridge proposal which Reset Urban is presenting as “a positive contribution to a broader discussion on this most important publicly funded project.“

“Simply put,” says Garth Falconer,“ the Leftfield alternative proposal is a two-part solution based on a new stand-alone pre-stressed concrete bridge curving out to the west of the Auckland Harbour Bridge carrying northbound lanes through the base of Northcote peninsula and second the repurposing of the existing bridge to carry southbound lanes with its two eastern lanes dedicated to wide, separated pedestrian and cycle movement.” He believes it could be built quickly and on a resourcefully modest budget of around $2billion

“This is a totally feasible yet visionary project which has been born out of profound frustration with an overly long protracted planning process for a much-needed multi modal solution to provide greater access across the central Waitematā.”

The team argues against a tunnel option. “The case against continuing with a tunnel option is overwhelming. It will create devastating disruption to the central city’s waterfront and on the sensitive ecology of upper Shoal Bay and it doesn’t cater for walking and cycling.”

Reset Urban is presenting Leftfield Bridge as a positive contribution to a broader discussion on the second harbour crossing.

Further the cost to build, Reset Urban says a tunnel is acknowledged to be in excess of the $10billion mark and the ongoing maintenance costs are massive (calculated at $100 to 300m annually)

“The challenge now for such an important project,” says the Reset Urban team, “is for not just the officials but all of us including the public to come together to agree on and support the best way possible for an additional crossing of the Waitematā for the 21st century.”