Yesterday the Prime Minister John Key and Minister of Transport Simon Bridges officially opened just the second Roads of National Significance to be completed – the $455 million Tauranga Eastern Link. All up the project is 21km long from Te Maunga in Tauranga through to Paengaroa, bypassing Te Puke along the way although it doesn’t actually open to the public until Monday. The NZTA say it was one of the most technically challenging projects as due to the very soft soil conditions however it has been finished up to five months ahead of schedule

Interestingly I was down just past Paengaroa last weekend visiting some family and so it would have actually been useful had it been open then as the new road is around 3km shorter and obviously straighter and faster than the current road. You can see a comparison of the two in the image (along with some of the engineering features the NZTA have pointed out.

Tauranga Eastern Link Map

The project has been justified based on a couple of key aspects and along with travel times savings, one of the key ones being that it allows for more greenfield growth on the edge of Tauranga.

“The Tauranga Eastern Link (TEL) has been designed to support the growth of the Bay of Plenty, reduce travel times and improve safety,” he says.

“It will be a strong anchor to support managed land use in a planned and sensible progression in this region.”

The TEL brings the East Cape and the central North Island closer to the Port of Tauranga.

“The road shaves off around 12 minutes when compared to the old route, which means some freight operators will be able to complete an extra trip each day.

“The new road will also significantly improve safety, reducing the amount of death and serious injury crashes in the region.”

Whether deliberate or not it kind of feels like one of the aims is to help further undermine the rail network by making it a lot easier for trucks to compete.

The video below gives a flythough of the project from November last year. As you can see there are lots of long straight sections – something that will almost certainly see people driving faster than the limit on. Speeding is already an issue on the 6km section that’s already been opened

What will be one of the most interesting factors to watch in the coming months and years is just how many people use it. The road will be tolled at $2 per trips for light vehicles and $5 for heavy vehicles and based on the Northern Gateway toll road up to Puhoi – around 25% are using the old road despite the new one being considerably faster. In the area there hasn’t been much of traffic growth recently as the chart below shows, the four locations are showing in the following image.

Road volumes around TEL

tel-aerial-markers

We’ll obviously keep an eye on what happens with traffic volumes on the road.

The designers have managed to come up with some of the most space hungry designs I’ve seen for the Paengaroa end. The roundabout joins the existing SH2 (top left, bottom right) with the TEL (top right) and SH33 (bottom left)

Tauranga Eastern Link - Paengaroa Roundabout

Lastly the NZTA already appear to have next phase of roading in Tauranga planned which will see the roundabout at the western end and the one just up the road at Bayfair replaced with flyovers. The NZTA estimate a start date for this of next year. Is it just me or does Tauranga seem to be trying desperately to be mini Auckland when it comes to land use and transport

Tauranga Eastern Link - Bayfair

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37 comments

  1. That Paengaroa roundabout section looks like it would make a nice race course. Perhaps if they don’t make enough money from tolls they could rent it out as a F1 circuit from time to time.

  2. Seen some roading obscenities in my time but this extravagant over-capacity and scandalous appropriation of land is extraordinary; almost as profligate as the Waterview intersection. No doubt some roading engineers are celebrating this wanton destruction of the landscape as a triumph of engineering over geology. To me it’s an inditement of state-condoned waste and an egregious stick-in-the-eye of evidence-based climate science.

      1. Matt your comment about trucks competing with rail (although I suspect flippant) was off course. I attended Mainfreight’s AGM on Wednesday. They have a very heavy reliance on rail – which will only increase – both here, Australia and the US where they operate. Their directors were mortally disappointed at the treasury advice to government that rail be sold. Mainfreight estimated they would have another 21,000 truck movements (their company alone) in NZ if they could not use rail. All of their main depot’s are built around or very close to rail sidings – their (and other long haul operator’s) success is very dependent on rail. Mainfreight is a strong proponent of rail freight and they said in the presentation that NZ’s current roads and resulting damage could not cope with the increased trucking required if rail were sold. They are very aware of infrastructure limitations. I doubt any other long haul operators would think differently. So, rather than the enemy, I think you’ll find these big operators are very aware and conscious of what makes economic and environmental sense and might actually care.

      2. And as for growth in the area – Tauranga, Papamoa and the Mount are now seeing a rise in disaffected Aucklanders moving down there. Aucklanders to Tauranga are now the same as Chinese to Auckland. Ask Real Estate agents.

    1. It was one of the better ones for RoNS, 2.0.

      Another thing is I was talking to my sister (who I was visiting) and who works in Tauranga and she said “why wouldn’t I use it”. Using the car running cost of ~70c per km, it’s actually cheaper than using the old road

      1. Also, its only the Southern portion that is tolled, (Between Domain Rd and Paengaroa )
        Anyone getting on at Domain Road (Papamoa) and heading north to Tauranga doesn’t incur a toll (with the return journey from the North to Domain Rd also toll free.

      2. Matt what are the traffic projections? Be interesting, it will get use as you point out as it does lead to real time savings, but whether there will be as much growth and uptake as they expect in the BCR calc. is the question…?

    1. Not well, was losing money so council managed to convince NZTA to take it over and they’ve just upgraded it to. Change over has just happened and the NZTA the same tech as northern gateway toll road to reduce opex costs

  3. Safer, quicker road for sure. Also gives Te Puke back its township. Trains will still be relevant and prevalent. The journey for the trucks on this road is only a small fraction of their total trip so not going to encourage them to abandon the rail system in favour of road. Most forestry products come by train and will continue to. We will definitely use it as it will just about halve the time to The Mount from Pukehina.

  4. I do love how the NZTA describe a $455 million project on their website as “Estimated Project Cost: $100+ million”.

    Nevertheless, this is built now. I’ll be interested to see how it is actually used and whether this resembles estimates.

  5. Land is relatively cheap down there. Better to own it now than pay over the top in future years to purchase extra land.

  6. I might be preaching to the wrong choir here, but I think 100km/h speed limit there is too low. 120 would probably more realistic, unless they want to use the inevitable fines to pay back the construction costs.

      1. people die because they are distracted, stupid, unlucky. Cars don’t explode once they go over 100kmh, no matter what Nzpolice says. On a wide straight road a too low speed limit is dangerous. As a vulnerable road user (motorbike) I much rather ride along a driver going 150kmh with his attention on the task than 100kmh along a driver with his attention on facebook.

        1. You do realise at the speed you are quoting (150 km/h) driver reaction times will be significantly reduced? Consequently, the distractions, stupidity and luck that you mention will all have a lot less less time to play out in the drivers favour. No matter how you spin it, excessive speed is a major and integral factor in accidents….often combined with the attributing factors you quote and others.

        2. show me the evidence that speed can be the sole factor for accidents. Stupidity can be the sole factor, as distraction can. But not speed alone. Take away the other factors (through training or natural selection, I don’t care) and speed is not a problem anymore

        3. and you do realise that on a divided highway the risk of head-on collision is virtually zero meaning that a lot of the issue with speed is taken away. This is why most countries have speed limits of 110km/h-130km/h on divided highways and some like Germany have unlimited speed limits on the autobahn. All of these countries have lower road deaths per capita (except the US) than NZ. With modern cars 110km/h is quite a sensible speed on a proper divided highway and even faster speeds wouldn’t be an issue for most except that NZ has poor driver training and poor road manners (not keeping left unless passing etc). All motorways/expressways/divided highways in NZ should automatically have a 110km/h speed limit unless there is a specific reason on a specific section of road that requires a lower limit (ie AKL harbour bridge/CMJ, Wellington through the gorge etc).
          Yes this group is mostly about PT (which is great we need a lot more of it), but in rural/intercity etc settings the car is the most practical form of transportation for all but a few ( I would still like to see proper passenger trains between Auckland and Hamilton/Tauranga).
          Even Patrick has acknowledged this fact in the past.

        4. It is an entirely non-controversial fact the faster you go the bigger the mess. And yes people are perfectly capable of fucking up on completely straight separately roads, with fatal consequences. Faster does mean more accidents and of greater severity. Including in Germany. In fact with little actual driving to do there can be a higher tendency to doze off on such a road.

          Additionally faster, above about 70kph, means more wasteful interns of fuel use and higher emissions, and a less efficient use of the road in terms of throughput. Although I concede this big fat duplicate highway will never be congested.

        5. Wrong, Patrick. It’s not only how fast but also your mass. Light flies past us at light speed all the time but it doesn’t hurt cause it’s got no mass. A 50 tonnes truck on the other hand would hurt a lot at much lower speeds than a motorbike. Non controversial fact that our road rules completely neglect.

        6. You would have to be some kind of special to seriously mess up on a straight divided highway. Even if you spin out you are still traveling in the same direction without any obstacles or vehicles to collide head on with. If a car doing 110km/h hits the back of a car doing 100km/h it is the same as a minor nose to tail you see everyday because there is only 10km/h in it.
          Another way to look at it is time value. Most people would not care if they used $2 more fuel to save 10 minutes. Saving an hour over time would be $12 which is a lot less than the average $20 that most people make in that time.

        7. Two points in reply to Bruce’s comment at 6:40 pm July 31st
          1) Bruce said “You would have to be some kind of special to seriously mess up on a straight divided highway. Even if you spin out you are still traveling in the same direction without any obstacles or vehicles to collide head on with. If a car doing 110km/h hits the back of a car doing 100km/h it is the same as a minor nose to tail you see everyday because there is only 10km/h in it”
          It is correct that 110-100 =10 for the contact. However after that everyone is doing pretty well to avoid a serious crash. The car doing 100km when hit from behind, the car doing 110km when hitting a car in front and all the cars around them who are probably worried (I think your normal nose to tail happens at slower speeds)

          2) Bruce said “Most people would not care if they used $2 more fuel to save 10 minutes. Saving an hour over time would be $12 which is a lot less than the average $20 that most people make in that time.”
          As stated this sounds reasonable. However at an average of 120km an hour you have to drive for 50 minutes, which is 100km, to get 10 minutes ahead of someone driving at 100km per hour. (50 minutes at 120km/hour gives 100km. Travelling at 100km/hour takes 60 minutes to do a hundred kilometres.)
          If you drive 100km at 120km per hour does this use one more litre ($2) than driving at 100km an hour? I think it may be more but admit I have not checked this.

  7. Next step for Tauranga: a vaguely functional public transport system that encourages people under 65 to live there.

    Just kidding. Moar roads.

  8. The Tauranga region is great. I love the Mt beach. The level of roading and un-walkability and lack of good PT put me off the place completely. My sister lives there, we holiday at Mt Maunganui from time to time but I just can’t stand the US style sprawl. In my opinion, it is worse than Auckland.

  9. Looks like the fend for the direct railway link between Te Puke & Tauranga (I know the kink iss currently out of service to save on maintenance, but these road works would remove the possibility of reinstating it in future according the the plan shown above).

    Do agree that something needs to be done with the roundabout by Bayfair though – traffic there can be bad (especially over summer)

  10. I hope they will have some public toliets somewhere on the route. I very rarely use the Taupo bypass when travelling between Napier and Auckland because Taupo is a natural place to stop and have a bit of a stretch a bite to eat and the other. And to have a look across the lake from the cliff near the town center.
    I used to stop at Te Puke as well when travelling to Gisborne or the eastern bay. I wont be using this new road though I dont do tolls although it does run along the railine for a while and I like to do a bit of train spottingl. I usually do a xmas holiday road trip to Gisborne, Wairoa Napier and then back through Taupo.
    Also looks like it runs through the swamp which is probably why the old road ran closer to the hills. Will be interesting to see how good they made the foundations as time goes by.

  11. Crikey your a miserable person… Its a great road and long overdue IMO… the old road through Te Puke is narrow and dangerous, esp with all the growth in the region… but you hate people don’t you…

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