The Waterview Connection project is currently New Zealand’s biggest transport project and the team working on it regularly put out pictures and videos of  the work they’re doing. Here are some of the latest updates.

Over the weekend the arch of the Hendon St walking and cycling bridge was installed.

Waterview Hendon Bridge- Dec 15

You can see the bridge under construction below. The approaches have been built for a while but the arch and the section that spans the motorway has had to wait till tunnelling finished so the conveyor belt could be removed.

Waterview Aerial - Nov 15 - 2

And here’s what the bridge will look like when finished.

Hendon Ave Bridge

Below is a look at the Waterview Interchange taken in November. You definitely couldn’t call it compact. The image also shows just how wide the causeway will be once finished. The completed layout will have four lanes citybound, 5 lanes westbound, bus shoulders each way and the cycleway

Waterview Aerial - Nov 15 - 1

Speaking of the cycleway the section along the causeway is now open and a considerable improvement to the conditions cyclists have endured in recent times. The remaining sections of the cycleway are due to be completed in the next few months.

While not part of the Waterview Project, also due to be completed soon is the Te Atatu interchange which will see the section of motorway from Te Atatu to Lincoln Rd finished early next year. As many of you will know there has been constant roadworks in this section since 2010 when the Lincoln Rd interchange upgrade started. The completion includes the new cycleway underpass of Te Atatu Rd (due before Christmas) and the extension of the NW cycleway to Lincoln Rd (The section from Henderson Creek to Lincoln Rd has been open for some time).

In the tunnel the work continues on digging out the cross passages

Waterview Cross Passage

And here’s one with pipes and valves for fire safety systems being installed.

Waterview Cross Passage valves

And of course now that the TBM has finished digging it is being disassembled and has been sold back to the manufacturer.

The 322 tonne cutter head after being lifted out of the ground.

Waterview TBM Cutter Head

The official video of the TBM breakthrough

The September and October Timelapses. The latter includes the TBM starting to be dismantled

The tunnels are due to open in early 2017

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27 comments

  1. When this Hendon bridge design was first publicised, I thought this bridge would be about as good at it gets for Auckland cyclist and walkers for some time.
    Nice design, but shame it had a huge motorway beside it to get there in the first place.

    Since then, we’ve had a load more projects open: the Grafton Gully, Pt Resolution bridge, Beach Road cycleway, the Westhaven promenade and of course the Lightpath & Nelson St cycleway just opened – neither of which was really heard of when the Hendon bridge design was published.

    The GI Tamaki cycleway has got under way via NZTA. The walking/cycling underpass at Te Atatu is just about there.

    So things are starting to improve. We just now need the Skypath mediation (underway this week) to reach a workable accord for all, then it too can join the list of projects making Auckland a way better place.

    And eventually we will see big ticket cycling/walking projects like this, getting routinely designed and built without the even bigger ticket (and currently, inevitable) motorway project beside it.

  2. While some see no end to the addition of massive and costly highway projects to the city, the opening of this one does mark the functional completion of the network as devised back at the beginning of the motorcity era in the middle of last century. It is worth reflecting on what a massive and city shaping multi-decade project this has been. Interestingly it also comes at very point that its financial source, petrol tax, faces existential threat from technology changes.

    It could be that this huge industry, burning so brightly right now, is actually facing a fundamental change. A change perhaps from aggressive expansion to optimisation of existing assets through better allocation of their use?

    After 60 years of the singleminded pursuit of the visions of 1950, it looks like it is time to reconsider where this ‘road’ is taking us and whether it is appropriate still, with the challenges ahead, to unquestioningly keep following it.

    And, perhaps ironically, if we do find the courage to change course that would align our age more to that earlier one, which was also one of discontinuity with the past, of departure and change in the face of new realities and global conditions.

    1. It depends how you define the “industry”. There heaps of projects that require the expertise of tunnel building and moving large amounts of earth.

      1. I mean the highway building complex; including the state institutions. Both they and the private contractors can and do plan and build other infrastructure; what I anticipate is an evolution to a new emphasis not the sudden end of anything. Though in time it could be as dramatic a change as we saw in that previous era; I certainly hope so, for our continued prosperity and the liveability of the biosphere.

        1. Let me quote from Hamburg’s City Vision statement …………”The core conflict in the town planning debate of the last century – the battle between car- friendliness and urban life in the city is now drawing to a close. The city of the future will be livable and allow mobility too. Innovative concepts for moving and stationary traffic unlock new opportunities to enhance the quality of time spent in street space. Hamburg must not be allowed to lag behind comparable big cities which are considerably expanding their metro systems”.

          Note: Hamburg’s official population totals 1,741,182 inhabitants so not that much more than Auckland.

        2. Great example Warren. Those in charge at city and national level do need to wake up to the very real fact that cities are in competition and that urban form, and therefore transport infrastructure, is a huge determinant of whether a place ‘lags behind’ or not. Auckland is NZ’s best hope for success in the new urban economy.

        3. Well, authorities do like their metro systems. Places them in charge of where people move to and from.

          As opposed to cars and bikes. Where the operator’s in charge of their own movements. And walking for that matter.

        4. Tony. Metro systems in general are much more efficient in space per person moved than motorways which is especially important for the quality of living environment in appropriate urban areas. And in New Zealand we have excess available electricity to power them, with potential for imported oil cost saving leading to improvements in NZ’s balance of payments. Obesity reduction, diabetes reduction, parking cost reduction etc. etc. the potential benefits from the government offering us more choice as to how we travel, as opposed to almost total expenditure on roads, just go on and on.
          Your reference to ‘control’ by the authorities is nuts!

        5. No Warren, the choice doesn’t lie in the mode. It lies in the choice of origin and destination.

          At least, it does for me.

    2. The end of road building is probably one of the drivers behind Fletcher’s expansion of their house building business featured here a few days ago.

    3. I agree. We are reaching the point where we will just be maintaining the existing stuff rather than building new stuff. I’m sure there will be plenty of building going on overseas but in NZ these major projects are unlikely to continue unless they are rail ones.

      1. That’s what I said a few years ago. Now I am not so sure anymore.

        Puhoi to Wellsford, East West Link, Additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing, Mill Road, Southern Corridor, Northern Corridor, SH16 widening to Westgate – there’s still so many projects in Auckland alone where massive tarmac is going down… while projects like AMETI or Northwest Busway or CRL get delayed again and again.

    4. “the functional completion of the network as devised back at the beginning of the motorcity era in the middle of last century”
      Are you sure? I thought we were promised a matching arterial over on the Eastern side of the city, to create a proper ring system? That one got stalled until death by the politically and financially well resourced citizens of St Heliers and Meadowbank, unlike the poor folk of Mt Roskill and Waterview who had no such muscle.
      [/opinion]

  3. That waste amount of precious land really necessary?
    You could put up a large enough park or several houses in that no-mans land.

    1. I did a rough calculation on Google Maps a couple of weeks ago: It looked like you could fit two rugby/football fields comfortably in the middle of that big cyclone (before the overpass obviously). Judging by the current heavy use of nearby Walker Park and Seddon Fields it must be a valuable use of space in a constrained isthmus suburb than a circle of weeds?

    1. Nah we’ll still be running wheeled vehicles on them, electric ones mainly, but anyone who has ridden the Pink path will know those motorways make fantastic cycleways. I love the camber on that, water just disappears, and it’s so much fun… Infra is alway repurposed over the…..

  4. I can’t seem to figure out on Google maps where the hendon footbridge goes to and from. I’m confused. Can someone please explain this to me?

    1. The 300 metre long footbridge will provide pedestrian and cycling access between the two communities of Owairaka and New Windsor as well as connecting to the southern shared path and new sports fields at Valonia Street and Barrymore Road.

      My best guess is that it connects these two dots: https://goo.gl/maps/JG7fzNpWgWL2

      sources:
      http://www.warrenandmahoney.com/en/portfolio/hendon-bridge/
      http://www.nzta.govt.nz/media-releases/hendon-footbridge-creates-new-feature-of-waterview-skyline/

  5. We could, for example, have a very well funded health and education system in this country but instead we get this kind of financial sink hole and a visual abomination!.

  6. I wonder why there was no passage under the motorway alongside the creek which would act as a more forgiving flood-way as well as reducing the need to climb up and over the motorway?

  7. what a total waste of money…what will NZTA have as an excuse..once the project is complete and two months later there is just more gridlock.
    the SH20 “improve” 5 or 6 years ago is classic example….or how about highbrook…the craziness never ends.
    How about finishing the CRL network first and having a complete metro…then seeing where roads are needed.

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