Wellington Street onramp to close (for 3 months!)

NZTA reports that as part of the Victoria Park Tunnel works, they will need to close the Wellington Street onramp between Monday 23 August and the end of November. Here’s the press-release:

On-ramp closure as Vic Park tunnel construction accelerates
21 Jul 2010 | Auckland Regional Office

Construction of the Victoria Park motorway tunnel in central Auckland is reaching a critical stage, and the NZ Transport Agency is advising motorists that the Wellington Street on-ramp will be closed for approximately three months so that supporting walls for the southern approach to the tunnel can be built.

The on-ramp – which provides access from the Auckland CBD and Ponsonby to State Highway 1 for traffic heading north across the Auckland Harbour Bridge – will close on Monday, 23 August. The NZTA says it plans to have it re-opened at the end of November.

“We plan to get in there, get the work done, and be gone as quickly as possible to avoid potential impacts on the transport network over the Christmas rush,” says the NZTA’s State Highways Manager for Auckland, Tommy Parker.

Mr Parker adds that the temporary closure – which will be backed by an extensive communications campaign to keep drivers informed – is the best and safest option for drivers and project workers.

“The only viable alternative is to do the work at weekends only, which would require closing the on-ramp for 40 consecutive weekends,” he adds. “The three month closure is the least fuss, most gain option.”

The proximity of the work to live motorway lanes means the walls can be built safely only with the on-ramp closed, and Mr Parker says the decision to temporarily close Wellington Street follows six months of planning and consultation,

“Construction of the tunnel reached a milestone earlier this week with the completion of the tunnel walls within Victoria Park, and it is now critical to progress tunnel construction outside the park to avoid impacts on the traffic network at the time of the Rugby World Cup,” he adds.

The Victoria Park Tunnel project is one of the seven roads of national significance and construction of the 450 metre-long tunnel will eliminate the last serious traffic bottleneck on the central motorway junction between the Auckland Harbour Bridge and the Newmarket Viaduct.

The motorway between the Wellington Street overbridge and Victoria Park is being widened from four to seven lanes. The tunnel will take three northbound traffic lanes, and the existing Victoria Park viaduct will be reconfigured to carry four southbound lanes. SH1 through St Marys Bay is being widened by one lane in each direction to 10 lanes in total.

Mr Parker says drivers most affected by the Wellington Street closure are people from the North Shore who work in the CBD and drive home between 4pm and 6pm. The NZTA will start its communications campaign on 1 August to ensure they have alternative choices to get home.

“Once on the motorway commuters will get an improved run because there will be no traffic merging from Wellington Street.”

The NZTA will promote commuting options through advertising, billboards, posters and a website being established for the three-month closure.

“Building a new section of motorway through the centre of a city is a challenging project,” says Mr Parker. “We will be doing everything we can to minimise disruption and delay.”

Interestingly enough, when the Wellington Street onramp was built (around 35 years ago I think) it was supposed to be a temporary onramp while other works to the central motorways were completed. While the onramp is reasonably well used, I wonder whether there’s actually a case to monitor what this does to traffic flows in general, and think about keeping it closed for good.

The reason why I think closing the ramp for good might make some sense is that it currently encourages a lot of traffic to pass through Union Street, which is an absolutely nightmare area with intersections with many onramps, off-ramps and so forth. While I understand that closing the ramp would mean more traffic on Fanshawe Street, the fact that the mess in the “upper” part of the CBD has been removed might well make that worth it. As Mr Parker says, it’s certainly likely to improve traffic flows on the motorway.

One possible negative is that more people could be encouraged to drive along Ponsonby Road to access the Curran Street onramp, and it’s already a problem that Ponsonby Road is so busy with cars when it really should be more of a pedestrian area.

I just wonder whether NZTA has ever looked at solving both these problems (all the traffic encouraged to Union Street and to Ponsonby Road), by linking up Newton Road with a north-facing ramp. I always thought it would be impossible, but looking at the aerial it might actually be quite simple to link in with the current SH16-SH1 northbound ramp, as shown in the map below:Such a ramp would actually be damn useful in reducing the amount of traffic in that upper CBD area: places like K Road, Pitt Street, Union Street and so forth – and also would probably reduce traffic travelling along Ponsonby Road to get to the Curran Street onramp I think.

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