One of the amusing things about me and the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” is that my family actually owns a beach-house at Mangawhai Heads and our trips to and from that house would very much benefit from this highway being put through. In fact, I write this blog post from that house – as we’re up here for a few days at the moment. Heading up yesterday morning the traffic we encountered wasn’t a problem, although for those heading south the “Warkworth problem” was highlighted once again.
My general feeling is that the “need” for the Puhoi-Wellsford road as something to significantly ease congestion (not just during holiday periods, but obviously most particularly at those times) is getting mixed up with a more pressing issue – what to do about Warkworth and the effect it has as a giant bottleneck on State Highway 1. Over the past few years some work did occur on widening parts of the main road through Warkworth, although that somewhat stupidly stopped short of resolving the two big problems – a two lane bridge in the middle of Warkworth and the horrifically complex Hill Street intersection.
This thing:
I’m sure that most people who have travelled through Warkworth at some point will be familiar with this intersection and the stupidly complex situation that arises for people trying, for example, to get from Elizabeth Street to Sandspit Road, or from Matakana Road (further north off Sandspit Road) to the south. We’re left with one lane each way for through traffic on State Highway One and giant conflicting movements between traffic getting out of Sandspit Road and southbound SH1 traffic.
Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that there’s actually a heck of a lot of traffic trying to get from SH1 to and from Sandspit Road and Matakana Road – because there’s actually a lot of area and population those two roads serve, particularly during holidays periods. Sandspit Road serves Snells Beach, Algies Bay, Mahurangi East and (surprisingly enough) Sandspit. Matakana Road serves Matakana, Omaha, Tawharanui Peninsula, Leigh, Goat Island and many other places. Traffic volumes on State Highway 1 south of Warkworth are around 50% higher than north of Warkworth – indicating a lot of traffic is either bound for Warkworth or turns off on these roads out to the eastern beaches.
In effect, we have two Warkworth problems:
- We are funnelling a lot of vehicles through pretty much the middle (if not the town centre) of Warkworth. This both severs the town, and also generates congestion by mixing through traffic with local traffic.
- The complex intersection at Hill Street, and the conflict between traffic bound for eastern beaches with through traffic and with town centre linked traffic, causes mayhem. Not just at holiday times – but most severely then.
If we look at this issue, yes sure the Puhoi-Wellsford road would solve it – but is that the cheapest, quickest and most logical way to solve this congestion problem? I tend to think not. There have been a few options for western collectors roads in Warkworth over the past few years, but what I think is really needed is a proper bypass – at 100 kph road with perhaps a couple of giant roundabouts providing access to existing roads at the very southern and northern ends of town. Something like this:
The details of such a scheme obviously need further work. I’m not certain whether this is the perfect place to put the bypass (though I wouldn’t want it any closer to Warkworth, especially if the place is set to grow significantly), I’m not certain whether you may shift the connections further north or south (though once again I wouldn’t want them any closer to the town). I’m proposing that the new bypass directly pass over both Woodcocks Road and Falls Road – to not put too much pressure on those roads as links to Warkworth town centre and also to allow through traffic a pretty free run. Full interchanges could be done instead of roundabouts – the cost versus benefit analysis would need to be done on that matter. Finally, the link road to Matakana Road could continue to Sandspit Road in the longer run I suppose.
As a general scheme, this is what I’ve always envisaged when saying the words “Warkworth bypass”. It would be interesting to see how much a scheme like this would cost (somewhere in the $50-80m bracket is once again what I’ve always envisaged as we’re travelling over fairly flat land). I really do think such a scheme would largely solve the congestion issues we get in and around Warkworth – for at least a few decades to then work out if the whole Puhoi-Wellsford scheme is needed or not.
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Hey the post is back (it 404’ed on me while I was typing a comment)
Josh, I know you and I might not see eye to eye on some issues but this issue you raised in this very post I 250% agree and see eye to eye on.
Did have one question though (might have missed it in your posts.
How many lanes on this proposed Bypass? 2-lane a wide flush median and safety shoulder, 3-lane – so passing bays or even tidal like the Harbour Bridge, or 4-lane – which would in my eyes defeat the purpose of the exercise.
BTW if you want to really stick my neck on a limb; not all Nat Party Members see eye to eye with Joyce and the Holiday Highway (me being one of them)
It’s not really long enough to justify building passing lanes, or bays, since it comes in around 3.5km and a passing lane of less than 1km is completely worthless. 2km is better.
Given that it will be used by heavy vehicles, building it four lanes from the outset is probably the most sensible choice since the marginal costs of construction are a lot less than any future expansion. This provides a nice, long passing lane for anyone stuck behind a truck or a towing vehicle, which does a tremendous amount to soothe fevered brows in heavy traffic.
Doing an unbalanced configuration for north/south pretends that the problems only occur for outbound holiday traffic. It’s true that they’re worst when everyone is going away, but things still get pretty nasty at the end of a holiday, especially for periods other than Christmas where everyone’s trying to come back at roughly the same time. Tidal gets messy, and doing it on a road with a 100km/h limit is begging for some nasty head-on collisions unless there’s a moveable barrier; much more cost, and it’d only really be used on a handful of days a year.
@Ben “BTW if you want to really stick my neck on a limb; not all Nat Party Members see eye to eye with Joyce and the Holiday Highway (me being one of them)”
Yeah but the default position of a Nat member is deference and butt-kissing, so any good, independent thoughts that a Nat Member end up meaning didly-squat through their patheticness.
And may I remind Nat Party members the first syllable of sycophancy is sick. The first day of Parliament TV, with the sycophancy (towards the Nat Party) on display from John Banks of Epsom, made me feel pretty sick.
All those Nat Party members with their rhetoric of “small government” will want to build the holiday highway at however many billions of dollars instead of entertaining cost-effective solutions as detailed here, because it gives them the chance to be themselves even more – hypocrites. Yes I think spending up large on motorways when you go on about downsizing government is complete hypocrisy.
Not sure how many lanes. Perhaps two northbound and one southbound. Whatever didn’t create bottlenecks while providing enough capacity and being value for money.
Looking at the satellite photos, that’s probably the optimal route in terms of minimising residential property buy-ups. Much more east and you’re getting into what looks like an industrial area, and much more west and your route starts to get quite long to build which requires paying more for easements through what’s currently farmland.
If that was built as four lanes, it’d be capable of carrying far more traffic than uses that road on pretty much any day of the year. Look at the Vic Park flyover, which survived on four lanes for decades. With no entries/exits, that bypass would be a steady stream of traffic and should alleviate a lot of the bottleneck that exists on the Puford route at present.
Toss in some realignments through Dome Valley, and some crash barriers, and you’ve dealt to most of the problems that exist on the road. The only other thing that could be done would be to extend four lanes all the way from Alpurt to the bypass, but that’d be getting bloody expensive.
Oh, and mandatory testing and training on how to merge like a bloody zip!
This is a great idea. The critical thing that would need to happen for any new bypass is at least limited access expressway designation (which in practice would probably mean interchanges, but doesn’t have to). It would even be theoretically possible to designate it as motorway, even if it was just two lanes with no median.
Reason for this is to prevent development from occurring along the bypass, which would over time degrade it’s “through traffic” utility. This is the cyclical curse of many existing bypasses around the country – the main street gets congested, a bypass is built, all the businesses in town then gradually migrate from the main street to the bypass, which in turn becomes the new main street, which then clogs up with intersections and local traffic, and then the pressure goes on for a new bypass…
Is that the designation applied to the Waikato Expressway? I’m leery of making it a motorway, because a) it’s unnecessary for a 3.5km stretch of road, and b) it then forces cyclists to take the very-much-longer way around instead of also taking advantage of the bypass. I don’t consider that to be a fair use of taxpayer money.
The Waikato Expressway is an expressway, and this would be the logical designation for a standalone bypass (i.e. not connected directly to Alpurt). I was speaking in theoretical terms when mentioning a possible motorway designation. It just needs to be limited access enough not to encourage big box retailing along the corridor. The best comparisons are the Taupo Bypass, the Hawkes Bay Expressway, and SH1 to the north of Dunedin. All these roads are two lanes, have no direct property access, and a mixture of at grade and grade separated intersections.
Two lane would be more than sufficient – the bypass capacity should balance the sections of SH1 that it would connect to at each end. It would only need to be 4 lanes if all of SH1 between it and Alpurt was also 4 lanes.
I don’t consider it to be outside the realms of possibility that there will be four lanes all the way from Alpurt at some stage. Given the costs of coming back and building extra lanes, I think going wide from the start makes a lot more fiscal sense.
Also, if it then becomes a very long passing lane, that’s not a bad thing either.
Half of the traffic will be coming off where the road joins at the southern end so the bypass probably only needs to be two lanes initially and providing it is designed to have four lanes in the future i.e. bridge spans are wide enough, then it is probably cheaper in the long run just to do only two initially. Better to build that extra capacity if/when it is needed rather than doing it all in one hit.
Admin, I’d recommend looking at however much the Taupo bypass cost as a good estimate for a 2 lane road. That included roundabouts at each end + at least two flyover interchanges that I can think of (Centennial Drive & Broadlands Road).
Or even closer to home the Mangatawhiri bypass
Mangatawhiri is probably a better comparison – Taupo bypass included a crossing of the Waikato.
Damn it, it 404’ed on me again
Right
Food for thought here in this post and comments.
My revised idea, 2 lane expressway (and allow NO developments on the route) with a median barrier and a safety shoulder wide enough for 1.5 lanes each side.
Now Josh mentioned an overpass at Woodcocks Road – Great idea! That overpass should be in my opinion future proofed for a full blown grade separated interchange when the Warkworth Satellite development (Auckland Draft Plan) takes off and the bypass is 4 laned right through to the existing Puhoi tunnel.
There is an example of that situation when I was living in Maroochydore, Queensland with the Sunshine Motorway (State Highway 90) being two lane and interchanges built but future proofed for 4 lane-ing which is now happening.
Google Earth should have some shots of that particular highway.
I’m still puzzled why, when building the Mangatawhiri and Taupo bypass’, that they didn’t spend just a bit more to put in median barriers.
That aside, yes this is exactly what Warkworth (and Wellsford for that matter) need. Relatively cheap but effective for 99% of the time.
Could you not just re-engineer the current Hill Rd intersection first? Why not just make a big roundabout, with the 5 roads spinning off it?
404 again
Roundabouts with 5 roads on a heavy strech of road could be asking for a disaster (and yes I have seen them (Panmure Roundabout is a classic).
Anycase without the bypass you have to travel through Warkworth at 50km/h on a narrow 2 lane road which is not going to help thoroughfare traffic.
The bypass allows 100km/h free flow (increasing the average speed)on a nice piece of wide road that can be future proofed and widened.
After the bypass I would say Hill Road could be re-engineered out. In the meantime State Highway 16 folks if going north?
Would definitely have 2 lanes northbound as there’s no reason not to, and the extra lane acts like a huge passing lane. Traffic splits at northern end so there’s little risk of a bottleneck.
My concern about two lanes southbound is that you end up merging those plus the existing southbound highway into a single lane. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Not sure where Josh’s comment was pointing too
But just in case from my earlier comment
“Now Josh mentioned an overpass at Woodcocks Road – Great idea! That overpass should be in my opinion future proofed for a full blown grade separated interchange when the Warkworth Satellite development (Auckland Draft Plan) takes off and the bypass is 4 laned right through to the existing Puhoi tunnel.”
So if one desires a 3 lane bypass (2 lanes north and one south) with the 2nd southern bypass lane built when it is needed for 2 lanes from the bypass to the existing Puhoi Tunnel.
Done! Right’oh let’s put it to the Govt……..
The East Taupo Arterial is 16km which is pretty similar to the length required to bypass Warkworh from the Puhoi tunnel. The final figure was put at $114m which included a couple of flash bridges and work to let thermal gasses out from under the road. I don’t see why a Puhoi to Warkworth (Nth) expressway would be much more, if any, than that figure especailly when large parts of the current SH1 would be used. Seems like a pretty good value to me.
Puhui to Warkworth alone is estimated at around $900m, the previously announced alignment required two 500m long viaducts as well as some absolutely massive cuts through hills as well as some massive embankments. It also used a completely separate alignment to the current road as most likely it will end up tolled so the existing road needs to still be available. The other issue is the land in that area is not very conductive to road building as it is very unstable so that only helps to further drive up the costs.
So make it build it with a huge shoulder that’s marginally closed off, and if a second south-bound lane is extended up from Alpurt in the future remove the closure and put in the appropriate markings. If Warkworth remains a satellite expansion zone in the Plan, four lanes from Alpurt to Warkworth is only a matter of time.
AND SOLD
So now then, lobbying time?
Admin, with your route you would have to build a bridge over Woodcocks, then a bridge over the Mahurangi River then another bridge over Falls Road – all in a very short amount of space. You would probably need a raised highway portion (which may raise costs and local objections). Also, someone has just built a brand new house on the corner of Falls Road and Viv Davie-Martin Drive and you are suggesting that they should have a massive motorway viaduct immediately overhead (or they lose their house). Now I know that some of you engineers don’t get the people issues but really guys – that person would not be compensated for all their costs – they would only get market value – which in the current economic state is less than build cost. So they would have to cop a loss – why?
Moving your route slightly to the East avoids the lifestyle blocks in that area and skirts along the back of the industrial area of Hudson Road. This makes it align almost exactly with the new bypass currently in plan (the old Western Collector)which, although not a high speed 100kph road will do the job just fine. Its a nickel-plated solution for a nickel-plated problem.
He made it abundantly clear that it was a suggested route, and nothing more. Stop making out that Josh cares nothing for the people who reside in the area, and read his posts carefully!
As Matt says, I don’t know the exact route but I disagree with pushing it further east. It needs to be a proper 100 kph bypass otherwise we just repeat the mistake of the current road. As many others said, something modelled on the Taupo bypass seems like a good idea.
Interestingly, 2 days ago there was no congestion at Warkworth, but there was congestion further back on SH1 at the top of Schedwys Hill, where it runs into Windy Ridge. All caused by ignorant and selfish motorists flying down the passing lane when they could see that the traffic in the inside lane was at a standstill. Now if they can’t learn to “merge like a zip” then perhaps the police should close the passing lane, which surprisingly seems to solve the problem.
On a general note though, very interesting and well thought out post. There would need to be some thought given to the route of the by-pass though. As Watcher points out, there is new developement along in this area, including a new sub-division (through which the proposed “Western Collector” passes) so the road here could only be 50km/hr and there is a retirement village right next to the industrial area. The crossings of Woodcocks and Falls roads would be problematical.
In the longer term, in order to 4 lane the existing SH1 from Puhoi tunnels to the by-pass, there would need to be a serious re-alignment of Schedwys Hill which would be costly, but has already been engineered. I have the plans with 6 possible re-alignment routes.
All this is surely accademic though, because anyone who has spoken to NZTA in the last 18 months about the Holiday Highway will know that the proposal is for a revenue generating toll road. I’ve even seen the scale of charges. Admin’s proposals would scupper that idea straight away!
Bob, I think we need to ensure we are well west of any subdivision of Warkworth – to ensure the road stays as a long-term bypass and doesn’t become another version of what the existing road is (a mess of trying to be about 6 different types of road).
Closing passing lanes has been done before, and it sounds like it should be a routine occurrence through holiday periods when most of the traffic is not heavy and the need for passing lanes to allow one to get past a slow-moving truck is greatly reduced.
Given that this road won’t be getting anywhere fast under a National government (by the time they finish arguing about the route and get the necessary properties acquired, they’ll have pissed off enough of the rest of the population on other matters that everyone will be dying to give them the flick), it being a toll road will be an even chance at best. A cheaper route that achieves all of the best possible outcomes for traffic passing Warkworth is a clear winner, especially if it can be done for a fraction of the Steven Joyce Memorial Holiday Highway price tag.
I saw the NZTA say recently that they haven’t done it for a few years as they found it only confused and frustrated drivers while not really doing anything to add to safety or improve travel times.
All the passing lanes on SH2 south of Bombay were closed last Labour Weekend.
They close all the passing lanes heading out of Wellington on the SH1 on any given holiday’s eve. It’s usually only a precursor to closing the whole road as another motorist writes themselves off.
I think passing lanes can be a wasteful sop to the impatient driver. Indulging their open-road motoring fantasies is often just a waste of money. 2 years ago the NZTA spent 18 months and $5.4 million dollars building a southbound passing lane just north of Waikanae. It’s completely flat so no vehicles do much below the 100 speed limit and the passing lane just allows for the impatient to pass at 110. And it is due to be bypassed by the Sandhills Expressway. $5.4 million is chicken feed pissing money up the wall by NZTA standards, but it was still a waste of money.
Then just south of Waikanae, the passing lanes were implicated in two bad accidents over the holiday break, with two fatalities, caused by speeding motorists trying to use the passing lanes when there was too much traffic for them to be useful anyway. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Go on Bob – tell us how much the toll will be.
Car $5.00 one way, HGV $9.00 one way, but that is for the section Orewa (current toll collection point)to Warkworth, where the next exit will be. The current Puhoi connection with existing SH1 will be lost because NZTA and the Govt. do not want an exit at Puhoi/Mahurangi West because they do not want to lose the revenue from tolls. The locals will have to resort to travelling via. Waiwera to join the Northern Motorway at Grand Drive if they want to head south or travelling via SH1 through Warkworth to join the motorway to Wellsford if heading North (when it’s built in 2032 of course). The relatively high figure for a car will probably result in a number of locals choosing not to use the toll road on grounds of cost, which will mean that more vehicles will return to the old SH1 Trying to convince the good people of Puhoi that they will lose their access if this scheme goes ahead is impossible. I just wish that someone could force the new Minister to reveal the true scale of this scheme and the huge impact that it will have on the area. Something for Julie-Anne to get stuck into?
That is pretty cheap compared to how much the thing will cost, effectively it is only going to be $3 for cars from Puhoi to Warkworth which means its really only a token toll amount, probably plucked from thin air. Based on its distance and cost the new section alone should be at least $5 making the total toll around $7
At 2009 prices
I’d be interested to know what proportion of the project is supposed to be funded via tolls. From memory $300m of the Puhoi tunnel was funded by borrowing against future toll revenue, but I think the annual rate of return is barely covering inflation, let alone a meaningful contribution to paying off the principal.
All up it was about $360m and I thought that half it of was being collected by tolls
Also means of course that the dangerous old road will still killing its users, and probably at a higher rate as the traffic slowing commercial traffic will be on the toll road…. What a mess.
And of course, the old road will have no maintenance because the budget will have been swallowed up by the construction of the Holiday Highway. So we’ll have increased use, less maintenance and an even more dangerous situation than exists now.
There’s no maintenance budget now. It’s all being swallowed up by the RODS.
The route shown goes through steep terrain & a couple of hills.
It could be moved to flatter routes either further west (passing near the intersection of Carran Rd & Woodcocks Rd) or east (to the west of the industrial properties on Hudson Rd, through 81-83 Woodcocks Rd, joining SH1 near Toovey Rd).
I would go further west then. Ideally we want to be as far west as possible without the route becoming too long and with it still being close to a straight north-south line.
Actually Admin, just having a look on Google Earth the least invasive and more direct route may be to leave the existing SH1 further east around opposite Toovey Rd, under Woodcocoks Rd, down the Maunsell rd road reserve, bridge the stream, and under Falls Rd, continue passed the industrial fringe to a new roundabout north of Hudson Rd. Looks like it would take out maybe one house [on Woodcocks], and generally hug the industrial area, thereby making the least insult to the local quality of life and landscape. Also looks a lot cheaper, the two roads look like they are on small ridges so it would smooth out the grade of the bypass to cut under them and putting a local road on a bridge over a new state highway is much less of a build than the other way around. Shorter, cheaper, much less impact on the local community.
Of course contours are flattened on aerial shots so I may be seeing an easier route than is there… local knowledge anyone?
If you were to do that, then you’d need to have some pretty damn strict planning rules to ensure no urban development happened west of the road and that no urban development happened along the road.
No access off the bypass would do it, wouldn’t it?
I’m ok with allowing left hand turns onto / off the expressway from existing roads and then building a overpass/underpass to enable vehicles to change direction where the terrain allows it to be done economically.
Or you designate it so that it cannot be used as an ordinary urban road, as suggested above. It’ll be NZTA’s road and it’s in NZTA’s interests for it to be as efficient as possible, which means that if they give it a limited access designation it’s unlikely that they’d be easily persuaded to remove the designation in future.
Plus, the designation only needs to remain intact for as long as it takes for Warkworth to spread west of the bypass. Once that’s happened, it becomes non-trivial for developers to try and build properties that front onto the bypass. Since it’s somewhat chicken and egg as to whether NZTA or the developers have to blink first for the bypass to end up as a choked local road, once the development has happened with frontages onto other roads it’s unlikely that there would be any future threat to the integrity of the bypass even if the limited access designation were to be removed.
There really is no choice in this matter as the funding for the planned by-pass road is being part provided by the developer who has already built the section where is passes through the sub division. So it will be a 50km/hr limit urban road. Total waste of time and a tribute to the “planners” from RDC.
Nothing compels NZTA to use that route, though, and if there’s an existing urban street in the way it’s a very good reason to find another way. For the bypass to be any use it needs to have a high speed limit and no cross traffic.
There’s no designation anywhere for the bypass, as far as I’m aware, so what the developer has or hasn’t done doesn’t affect anything.
I would be surprised if the existing highway was not a limited access road. Most busy state highways around the country have limited access from them. This gives NZTA discretion to any new accessway/roads off the highway. Unfortunately there are still too many accessways granted approval from NZTA for various different reasons.
As they are constructing the road from scratch, I would have thought the better option would be for no accessways/roads to be allowed. This would form a piece of roadway like the existing Hawkes Bay Expressway.
Hi
Would prefer a dual or triple carriage way from new tunnel to reduce congestion at Puhoi turnoff, and to build an Off ramp at woodcocks to access warkworth township and increase number of lanes at woodcocks road beginning at the western end (that is from Old woodcocks road) or alternatively use current single carriage way as a one way road and build another along side for the opposite direction to Warkworth. This would be in direct alignment with Wellsford as the crow flys.
Secondly, to complete tar seal and increase number lanes of important roads such as road to the cheese factory from the western end. Tourist buses access this road on a regular basis but some parts are very extremely dusty
Regards
Zara