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The Birdcage - Source: ONE News -
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An historic part of Auckland is about to be bulldozed to ease traffic congestion.
The government is promising temporary upheaval while it pushes ahead a multi-million dollar tunnel under Victoria Park.
The consortium V-Formation has won the tender to build the Victoria Park Tunnel.
At The Birdcage pub in Freeman's Bay, they aren't pouring beer. They're pouring money - $430 million into the motorway system rumbling overhead.
"One hundred and sixty five thousand cars, trucks and buses currently use this small stretch of road every day. There are long queues during morning and afternoon rush hours. I can tell you it starts about 6:40am from experience," says Steven Joyce, Transport Minister.
The New Zealand Transport Agency is making the viaduct a one-way street south and putting three lanes northbound, underground.
By next month surveyors will join the skaters, joggers and lunchtime lingerers in the inner city park. And by January, some of 300 workers required will be digging deep.
"You can expect to see a lot of bulldozers over the next few years which I'm sure will be music to the ears of the tenderers," says John Key, Prime Minister.
Music to his ears too is a surprising promise from the construction consortium that the tunnel will open two years early.
"I said we're pretty confident that we'd be having an opening before the (Rugby) World Cup," says Mark Binns Fletcher Construction Chief Executive..
There is one problem. The heritage-listed pub stands right in the road.
Despite the crumbling brickwork, the plan for the hotel, established in 1886, is to lift it up, slip rollers underneath and push it gently up the hill to a carpark. The budgeted cost is eight to ten million dollars.
"Well it's a very important building, iconic landmark, so yeah it's worth preserving," says Tommy Parker Of the New Zealand Transport Agency.
There's likely to be argument over how well their preservation plan works.
But the rush to build the road may yet trump that.
