23 comments

    1. Northern side of the park over motorway from near Barrymore Road to sportsfields and shared path along motorway south side.

  1. Its a real shame, as has been pointed out before that the only way to get good cycling infrastructure is to hang a multi-billion motorway off the side of it.

    1. Agreed, agreed. The two cycleway bridges between the tunnel portals (over rail line and Oakley Creek) will also look nice, though a bit smaller. Once AT gets finally ready to do their public consultation (originally planned for mid 2013, sadly still not yet…), you will be able to see some images of those too…

    1. Boy that video leaves me feeling ill when I look at the money available and their lust to build monstor motorway stuff like the biggest road tunnel in Australasian and 4 level motorway interchanges. Interesting that the Western Ring Route is designed to take traffic off SH1’s Auckland Harbour Bridge but that doesn’t seem to figure in NZTA’s planning for the next harbour crossing.

  2. I love it. I run a walking group and look forward to all of the new places we can explore. This is very exciting 🙂

  3. Not a bad bridge, for sure. Do NZTA actually care how good the cycle lane is for users though, or is providing eye candy from the motorway more important? For instance standing directly above it on Mays Rd bridge you have to do a 400m back tracking detour down side roads to get on the path. Unlike the motorways it is a benefit not a problem to have ‘on ramps’ at every single opportunity.

    1. Well, the northern end ties in well with anyone coming off Richardson Road, or along the Underwood Park cycleway. If you are coming from west from Hendon Ave, yes, you might have a detour.

      Southern end, if you come from the north side and want to go east, again it might be a small detour as the bridge curves west before tying in with the Sh20 cycleway, but it’s much more graceful and I think it will feel much less convoluted and “forced detourish” than the May Road access (know what you mean there).

      Route of the sweeping bridge (with since slightly changed southern end – more of a t-intersection now) is shown in this CAA plan (though we prepared this for another reason, as the legend explains).

      http://caa.org.nz/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Richardson-Road-Bridge-CAA-proposal.jpg

  4. Looks like this is future proofed for the Mt Roskill rail line, but anyone confirm this. Would be a real pain if rebuilding this bridge had to needlessly be added onto the cost of the Roskill rail line.

  5. Simply beautiful. Once these new bridges are built we’ll have the makings of a superb cycle tour of the city’s cycle bridges – they’re mostly in the Western sector of the city so it would be easy to do.

  6. Looks very elegant – love it! But: Design by Warren and Mahoney? No, they’re the architects. Who are the Engineers? Cos they will be the real designers of the bridge.

      1. But, as far as I know, Warren and Mahoney are solely an architectural practice, always have been, no engineers at all. I just think that Engineers and Contractors need as much acknowledgement as do Architects. Quantity Surveyors I could take or leave…. Project Managers I could definitely be happy to never hear another word about.

        1. It was the engineers that gave us the ugly utilitarian foot bridges we’ve had to date such as that in Kingsland, no, it’s the Architects we have to thank for this one.

    1. The bridge was designed by “The Well-Connected Alliance” which is the alliance formed for this tunnel project by NZTA, Fletcher, McConnell Dowell, Beca, Tonkin & Taylor, Warren & Mahoney and others. Warren & Mahoney provided the architects and 3D graphics for this bridge, Beca provided the structural/bridge engineers, and Tonkin & Taylor provided the geotechnical engineers for the foundations. As cheesy as it sounds, all of the companies including NZTA worked together as one organisation on this project. It’s a good looking bridge because that’s what NZTA wanted – if they wanted a cheap one, we’d have an ugly utilitarian bridge alright.

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