Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020.
There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of those was from former Transport and Finance minister Steven Joyce. Apart from the general politicking of it, this bit stood out to me.
Now we have more general acceptance that new multi-lane highways should be built, this is a great time to ask ourselves how much needs to be built.
What is the correct size of our expressway network? What should our goals be now that the first roads of national significance are nearly finished?
There’s still a lot to be done. I can’t see Australia for example accepting the lack of four lanes between cities like Tauranga and Hamilton, or Auckland and Whangarei. Or four lane highways petering out a few kilometres outside cities the size of Christchurch.
And I doubt most Kiwis living near those roads accept it either. Meanwhile as a result of Left-wing activism Wellington city remains a permanent traffic jam.
It is true that a lot of our rural highways don’t need the four-laning treatment. There is no point four-laning the Desert Road or State Highway One through Southland because there isn’t the traffic to justify it. A number of well-placed passing lanes do the trick in most places.
However around six per cent of our state highways are high-use.
They account for more than a third of all kilometres travelled on the highway network. Upgrading them is about safety as well as reasonable travel times. Stressed and impatient drivers making rash and risky decisions are an under-rated contributor to New Zealand’s road toll.
With all that in mind, here is a starter for ten on what a new state highway building plan for New Zealand could look like: three networks of modern four lane highways based through and around our three biggest cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The Northern Expressway network would safely and efficiently link Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga and Rotorua. The Central Expressway network would do the same for Wellington, Hutt Valley, Levin, and Palmerston North, on towards Whanganui and over the hill to Hawkes Bay.
The Southern network would radiate out from Christchurch, north to around Amberley, south to Ashburton and on towards Timaru, and inland towards the Alps.
A decent chunk of each is now already built. Completed over say a twenty year period the three networks would provide safe, reliable, stress-free travelling of a standard that is taken now as a given in the rest of the developed world.
Firstly there are plenty of examples in Australia of cities similar sizes to Hamilton and Tauranga that are not connected by expressways. For example Ballarat (105k) and Geelong (268k) are the same distance apart as Hamilton and Tauranga and the road between them is about the same quality as most of our state highways. In Queensland, Cairns (181k) and Townsville (153k) are a bit further apart at about 300km but similarly have just a two-lane highway between them.
Joyce is correct that that many of our state highways simply don’t have the traffic volumes to justify upgrading to expressway standard. Where I’m sure we differ is the amount of roads that fall into that category. Yes, a third of all kilometres travelled happen on high-use roads but that third can be made up from just the state highways within Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. As I’ll show later in the post, as soon as you get outside of those areas, volumes drop dramatically.
Expressway networks
Perhaps what I thought was most interesting was his suggestions of the expressway networks. Clearly this thought process was been behind much of the previous governments and Nationals current transport policy and while it might appeal to some on paper, that changes if you take more than a superficial look at them. In each of these three networks the red represents expressway/motorway segments that already exist, yellow are projects already underway or announced by the government last month and green are hypothetical projects mentioned by Joyce above or were in Nationals transport policy at the last election.
- Northern Expressway network – Within Auckland I’ve included in here the East West Link and a bypass of Huapai (this hasn’t been on any list but is in the Supporting Growth work). Outside of Auckland also includes an extension of SH1 4-laning to Taupo as well as SH2 from Omokoroa to past Katikati, both of which were in Nationals last election policy. In total these additions are about 330km of new expressway.
- Central Network – I’ve made some assumptions on just where these would go but they amount to over 275km of expressway.
- Southern Network – I’ve assumed by inland towards the Alps he means along SH73 towards Darfield. To complete this network would require an additional 200km of expressway.
How much would it cost?
All up that’s over 800km of new expressway and it’s not going to come cheap. To get an indication of just what it might cost I took a look at the projects just announced and many similar types of projects completed over the last decade or so to provide a reference. As part of this I excluded projects like the widening of existing motorways but I have included a number of 2-lane highway realignments, such as the recently completed Matakohe Bridges as they’ve often involved decent scale earthworks and bridges.
In all cases I looked at a cost per km to provide a better comparison and I adjusted them for inflation. As you can see below, there’s a wide variety of costs as each project will have different amounts of earthworks and structures needed. As such the price range for expressway grade roads seems to vary from about $15 million per km to about $80 million per km.
For the hypothetical network above, in cases where we know the estimated costs, such as from a recent business case, I’ve used those figures, otherwise I’ve used a figure of $30 million per km. In total these motorways/expressways would cost the country close to $27 billion to build on top of existing commitments such as the over $4 billion recently announced. Even spread out evenly over 20 years, as Joyce suggests, it would leave little or no money for any other, likely more valuable, project.
So they’re expensive but do they make sense?
When should we build them?
One of the projects we have a good idea of costs about is Warkworth to Wellsford. The project isn’t funded but recently the NZTA announced they were going to be lodging resource consent for it next month – probably a part of refilling the bucket of ‘shovel ready’ road projects for the next time the government comes knocking for projects to quickly fund. As part of this, they’ve also released the business case for the project.
The road will be 26km and has an estimated cost range of $1.7 to $2.1 billion, meaning it has an average cost of $65-85 million per km. This is much higher than many other four-lane highway projects and one of the reasons for this is likely to be that the project includes an 850m tunnel which they say is to avoid the need for a 150m high cut through the hillside. For a quick comparison, the Johnsons Hills tunnels just south of Puhoi are 340m, the Victoria Park tunnel is 440m and Waterview is 2.4km in length.
However while there are benefits to the project, they’re not that large as the traffic volumes are relatively low (12-15k vehicles per day) and over it’s length it only saves about 3 minutes of travel time. This means the Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) for the project is just 0.7, meaning it returns only 70c for every dollar it costs to build.
But what’s particularly interesting about the business case is it includes a set of project triggers for when it might be needed. These are:
A mix of criteria is proposed to the trigger the implementation for the Project, being at least two of the following criteria:
- DSI savings forecast from Dome Valley safety improvements not achieved within 3 years
- A 30% increase in total number of closure hours per annum from 2018 levels
- Forecast traffic volumes are predicted to exceed 25,000 AADT
It’s the last one that is most interesting as it provides a useful reference point for other potential state highway projects. For reference, most sections of the Waikato expressway do about 25-30k vehicles per day.
State Highway Traffic Volumes
Finally, something I was actually working on from before the announcement. The graphs below show average daily traffic volumes on a number of state highways. I’ve included a line showing what 25k per day looks like. I’ve also kept the volumes at the same scale
A few things that these highlight.
- Auckland is in a league of its own. Even traffic volumes on the busiest section of motorway in Wellington or Christchurch doesn’t come close to the amount of traffic on most of Auckland’s motorways.
- The busiest section of motorway in the county is between Khyber Pass and Gillies Ave with just over 200k vehicles per day.
- Even existing sections of the Waikato Expressways only carry around 25k vehicles per day.
- Apart from a few urban areas, there’s almost no-where where volumes are close to that 25k per day threshold.
- The first graph really highlights how long SH1 is north of Auckland
The low volumes on most of our state highway network combined with the high costs of upgrading to expressway standards suggests that likely the best course of action are more projects such as those 2-lane realignments in the cost graph above. Combine those with safety upgrades such as median and side barriers, additional passing lanes and we can probably get most of the benefits of an expressway for a fraction of the cost.
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A Northland Expressway is the only realistic chance of Northland ever getting an acceptable interregional public transport system.
An express bus to Whangarei running on a new expressway could get there from Auckland in less than 2 hours. Hopefully it could also use the busway from Albany when traffic on the motorway starts to slow down. And unlike the current Northliner (or whatever they call it now), it would actually be a comfortable ride, not swaying from side to side over every undulation and poorly graded corner – more like a train where you can actually sleep or work without feeling carsick.
Then the route could split into one branch going to Kaikohe and Kaitaia (once SH1 is open again) and another going through Paihia to Kerikeri.
I think its no coincidence that Northland is the poorest region in NZ and also one of the hardest to get to – mentally as much as physically. Driving to Taupo or Rotorua is a doddle (even before the Waikato expressway opened the route via SH27 was easy), whereas driving to Kerikeri or Paihia (which is less distance) seems in my head to take far longer because its a frustrating, slow drive on at-times difficult roads. This is a barrier to local tourism and also business as people are put off from travelling north of Auckland as it feels like a chore.
Even an improved two lane road with separated intersections and regular passing lanes (think of the SH2 Mangatawhiri bypass) would be a huge improvement in terms of safety, traffic flow and user satisfaction compared to what we currently have over most of the route to Whangarei.
In fairness an expressway between New Plymouth and Hamilton is the only realistic chance of Taranaki getting an acceptable interregional PT system that connects to the larger population centres to the north. However, I don’t think that is on the cards.
SH3 from Hamilton – New Plymouth is already mostly fine for the traffic it carries. The only truly shit parts are the Awakino Gorge and Mt Messenger (soon to be bypassed). A few town bypasses (around Te Awamutu, Otorohanga and Te Kuiti) and the journey time end-to-end would not be much slower than an expressway for most given the relatively light traffic.
I agree there are a lot of other parts of SH3 that should be re-aligned too, but overall the traffic flow on that route is mostly smooth especially when compared to SH1 north of Auckland which is frustrating as hell most of the time.
I drive both roads reasonably frequently and while I agree there is more traffic on SH1 than 3 the average speeds on both routes isn’t that different.
If you get frustrated being stuck behind slower vehicles SH1 is worse, although it has more passing lanes.
Lets improve both of them and make them more resilient, a couple of years ago when we had a wet winter SH3 had 5 single lane stop go sections which added about 30 mins to the journey.
SH1 should get more improvements as it carries higher volumes, however neither of them are anywhere near the levels to justify an expressway.
SH1 is way more frustrating than 3 to pass vehicles. The 80K passing lane in the dome is a joke as the slow vehicles speed up to 80 and also on the waipu flats everyone suddenly goes 110 and you can’t pass. Same with the Brynderwyns south bound everyone speeds past then holds you up back in the 100 zone. Occasionally there will be a Redflex NK7 parked on the passing lane meaning you can actually keep the front of the traffic .
I agree that overtaking is a pain on that road, however I’m not sure it’s a justification for an expressway.
I used to overtake anything I could but then with a wife and kids I relaxed a bit and just overtook if it were easy, it added about 5 minutes to the journey to Kerikeri. I’m not sure the cost of one section of expressway let alone the whole thing could be justified on the basis of this overtaking issue.
Overtaking/or not overtaking doesnt matter on paper, but its more of a psychological thing.
One of the economic benefits which is always used to justify new roading is that ‘it will attract investment and business to the area’. Whether you agree with it as a justification, it is definitely something that happens.
If you had the choice of driving for 2 hours on a twisting, poor quality, rough road where you were constantly driving slower than you want due to traffic ahead, or driving for 2 hours on a long straight road with no traffic or 4 lanes where you can do whatever (legal) speed you want – which would you prefer? its the same drive time, but one is much easier and more satisfying than the other.
Hence if I wanted to build a factory on some cheap land – would I choose Tirau, or Whangarei? Both are the same drive time from Auckland, but one is an easy blast down the Waikato expressway plus a short stint on old SH1, and the other is a chore going through the dome valley, then wellsford, then the brynderwyns, then the Waipu straights where traffic inexplicably rubber-bands between 80 and 110 km/h…Which one would I prefer if I need to drive to Auckland regularly to see customers? Which will be easier/cheaper to deliver my goods to market from? Will potential new buyers want to bother with the drive to Whangarei to do business with me when they could go to a competitor south of the city?
Also consider the choices of 1.5 million potential tourists in Auckland. I want to go away for the weekend…Do I take the easy and relaxing 3h15min drive to Taupo, or the busy and tiring 3h15min drive to Kerikeri? I didnt even know Kerikeri was the same drive time as Taupo until looking it up 2min ago because it always feels like way longer.
I’m not saying any of this is a true justification to spend 10+ billion on an expressway to Whangarei – only that it matters more than you might think when people have choices.
Well said MC. Many times have avoided going up north because of the thought of having to crawl through Dome Valley because somone always goes really slow except for the passing lane when suddenly they exceed the speed limit. And the thought of “how long is my delay through Wellsford going to be this time” and then getting up the Brynderwyns is hard enough without being stuck behind a truck. And the thought of the one bit where I can keep a consistent speed (waipu) everyone drives slow…right up until the passing lane where 120+ is the norm. Somehow there have been many accidents along that route and the only thing I can think of is people falling asleep or taking stupid risks because people don’t follow section 2.1 of the LTA.
Too much straight road even if faster is boring though, and more risk I’d fall asleep. I enjoy a good winding road trip to break the boredom.,
The number of Aucklanders heading north or to the Coromandel for the beaches far outnumbers those heading for Taupo and Rotorua for holidays. Clearly people are willing to tolerate the inferior driving experience.
From a national perspective I don’t think it matters whether a factory ends up in Whangarei or Tirau. Sure people in Northland would prefer the former but I don’t think it warrants vast sums of taxpayer money.
You may not think it warrants a vast sum of taxpayer money but you’ll probably find voters disagree. If it’s such a bad idea the govt will loose the next election however I would suggest they will likely gain votes as a result just like they have with reversing slow speed limits. Numbers are almost meaningless to most people they just want a new road.
I think you’re right. However, money doesn’t grow in trees, so I suspect unfortunately when National leave office there will be an expressway replacement for the Brynderwyns under construction, while the Dome Valley and Whangarei to Marsden Point will still be as they are today.
I would suggest the govt will start Warkworth to Te Hana first as it’s the easiest to toll and it already had quite a bit of work done on it so it’ll be much faster to start construction. This is the only section you could see perhaps starting in 5 years the rest of it they really have no idea what they are going to do yet. Another reason is it’ll finally mean Auckland has a motorway to motorway start and finish at either end. Another slightly more selfish reason is because it’ll be faster to build it’ll remind voters that stuff is actually happening lol.
Just found the answer to a couple of our questions. There will be a tunnel on the dome section (850m) and they do intend to start this first they seem to know what they are doing here they have been slowly working on it for the last 6ish years so makes sense they want to start it first. No point in advocating for a 2+1 for this road an expressway is happening and it’s not going to be stopped this time at least for this section.
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/planning-and-investment/docs/rons/rons-warkworth-to-wellsford.pdf
From a national perspective it definitely DOES matter where economic growth is centered because you end up with highly unequal development. So you will get one or two regions with high income, and the rest with much lower income which then leads to a population/brain drain away from those regions. This just creates a vicious cycle where regions die and cities get overpopulated and overpriced.
This has always been the case with Northland which is why its getting special attention now. Its the poorest region in NZ yet its right next to the financial and industrial capital. This is a pretty weird situation to have and I would say the main reason is geography which leaves most of Northland relatively isolated.
Whether this warrants spending billions on a 4-lane expressway is debatable (I heavily agree with you that a 1+1 realignment with median and regular passing lanes is a much better starting point), but something needs to be improved soon the reduce this isolation.
About travelling to the Coromandel vs elsewhere – yes, Northland and Coromandel are popular for summer holidays when people can stay there for weeks at a time and make the drive worth it – but I’d like to see stats for weekend trips. A lot of people will visit Taupo or Rotorua just for the weekend.
I’ve done multiple day trips to Rotorua as the drive is just so easy . Would never consider doing the same for Whangarei it’s a whole different challenge in terms of driving and stress and delays.
I’d definitely like to see SH3 upgraded between the Hamilton spur of SH1 and Otorohonga.
I get the mental thing re driving on some of our roads. 2 weekends ago i drove to Wellington, having never driven into Wellington for around 30 years. I was girding my loins preparing for the painful journey from around Otaki south when we hit the beautiful new motorway at Otaki and next minute we were in Willis St! Amazing! Easiest city in NZ to get to!
A Northland expressway is needed there is just no way to fix that goat track it needs replacing. While the dome valley safety improvements have made the road feel safer it’s still not as safe as an expressway as it still can’t have median barriers at every point. It’s also still an extremely slow route to drive through maxing out at 80k vs an expressway at 120. Not to mention it’s more like 60 if you get stuck behind a truck.
You could apply that to roads across the country between multiple regions. Any reason why Northland specifically needs an expressway?
Who said other parts of the country don’t need an expressway it’s the only realistic chance we have of the road toll going down. Of course it’ll likely drop this year due to the economy tanking but one day if we don’t build this infrastructure it’ll go back up. I know there’s options like a 2+1 etc but it’ll never be as fast or as safe as an expressway. The road between Wellsford and Whangarei is such a mess by the time you’ve “fixed” all the little bits that need fixing the cost won’t have been far off the cost of just building a new road. Govt could collect quite a bit of revenue off trucks for reducing their travel time etc. Brynderwyns adds something ridiculous like $40 to the cost of a trip. There are some interesting ways this could be part funded but noting Northland deserves a decent road not a slow windy 80k goat track. Even if it is wreckless spending.
I disagree that this road couldn’t be improved with a combination of 1 + 1, 2 + 1 and realignments for a lot cheaper than a full expressway.
The big costs come from interchanges and earthworks through challenging terrain. There is a lot of middle ground between the current goat track and a full expressway.
Do you have a link to the Brynderwyns adding $40 to a journey? It doesn’t sound right.
The best way to get the road toll down is to cover as much of the country in 1 + 1 and 2 + 1 roads as possible, not to spend all the money on an expressway on one particular route.
Sorry don’t have a link for the $40 I’ll have a look later and post if I find. Just for context the diversion was costing trucks about $200 extra per trip. And the economy was taking a $14.6 million dollar hit per day. Do you really think dome valley should just be left as it is? Surely that at least has to be a complete replacement? And would be an easy one to toll. I’m not sure if there should be a toll from Wellsford north it just needs to replace the old road entirely it’s horrific.
It’s not great that’s for sure, however what is truly horrific are the figures being bandied about to replace it.
If I were to prioritise roads in Northland first would be a median separated 1 + 1 & 2 + 1 bypass of the Brynderwyns as this section is most prone to closing.
Second would be 2 + 1 improvements to Whangarei to Marsden as this carries the most traffic, third would be a 1 + 1 & 2 + 1 bypass of the Dome Valley and Wellsford.
Ok why not just 4 lane dome valley if you want to build a whole new road anyway the cost difference would be minimal as all the earthworks etc would be the same and you could get a 120 speed limit on the road making journey times quicker. The dome is quite a challenge and could involve tunneling so better just to make it a proper tolled 4 lane expressway.
Again I disagree that there wouldn’t be that bigger difference in cost. 120kmh requires significantly more earthworks to minimise the gradients and curvature.
Four lanes would require twin tunnels whereas a 2 + 1 road could be 1 + 1 for the tunnel bit. In addition an expressway would likely involve interchanges which add significantly to the cost.
An expressway would obviously be more expensive. But who wouldn’t want less of a gradient a much safer interchange etc. So what it costs extra its completely reasonable to spread that cost out over decades for future generations to cover as they will also be using the benefits. Anyway a weird 2+1 brand new road to bypass the dome is probably never going to be considered so there’s no proving that it would’ve been cheaper. We can have any bypass we want as long as it’s a 4 lane expressway. I just would like to know if they ever got round to deciding whether or not they were going to tunnel or not. They still were not sure when they got close to starting the project.
“It’s difficult and expensive so might as well make it the most difficult and expensive possible and later generations can keep paying for it” is a mantra for economic ruin.
I agree it will be expressway or nothing, there’s good evidence of that north of Parapaurumu.
However, Simeon Brown has been alluding to the Brynderwyn’s becoming top priority due to the issues with that section of road. Combined with the eye watering cost of Warkworth to Te Hana I expect this will give them the excuse they need to kick this can along to the next government.
I’ll stick with my bet that we will still be crawling through the Dome Valley in the mid 2030s. One silver lining is it will get good value out of Labour’s safety improvements on this section.
How much will you be willing to pay in tolls to go 110? Quoting Patrick on twitter
”To be clear, this is 10x Transmission Gullies, which we are paying off at $125m per year for the next 22 years. So this is likely to mean annual payments of ~$1.25b for 20+ years. So an over $25b bill handed down to the next generation. Show us the economic evaluation please”
It would be lovely to have 4 lanes everywhere, do this isn’t Narnia. Over a third of the country live in one of the most gridlocked cities in the OECD which currently has no real solution to traffic and we want to build 4 lanes as far as we can in every direction?
I’m willing to pay the full fare of a bus trip or train journey if you are willing to pay the full cost to use this proposed road 🙂
I would happily pay a $10-$20 toll to travel from Orewa to Whangarei on an expressway at 110 or 120 kmh.
Hell, coming home from the Bay of Islands with a trailer after Waitangi weekend I’d probably pay $10 just to skip Wellsford and the Dome Valley.
However I would be just as happy to pay a slightly lower toll to drive on a high quality realigned road with median barriers and regular passing lanes at 100 km/h. Which I think is a more reasonable option.
All major new roads should be tolled IMO and I’m not opposed to existing roads having tolls applied to help raise funds for them too. Transmission Gully should definitely be tolled and so should the Waikato Expressway.
Great holiday annecdote, your $20 still leaves us a lite short though
The NZTA study on tolling Transmission Gully says that if they charged a mere 10% of the project cost, up to 50% of all users would divert to the old route.
I’d pay the toll too, but people are cheap, the old road when you get rid of even 40% of the traffic would be much nicer to drive, and the time gained doesn’t matter that much to most people because they’re not on the clock. Above all, there just isn’t that much value in these new roads for drivers.
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/projects/transmission-gully-motorway/docs/Transmission-Gully-tolling-assessment-summary-redacted-version.pdf
Joe – Don’t forget you are also paying $9.50 from Orewa to Whangarei in road user chargers if you are driving a diesel or EV. Depending on your vehicle similar for petrol.
There should be a toll on the section passing dome valley as that’s going to be likely very expensive. How much? Transurban charges trucks $40 for Northconnex to bypass Penant Hills road. I don’t think we are quite that greedy here so maybe $20 for trucks and $5 for cars/motobikes. The time saving for trucks would easily justify that toll for them anyway. As for the rest of the route you can’t really toll as I don’t see an option but to just get rid of a lot of the old road entirely at least we won’t have to pay the maintenance twice. This is likely to be funded through the increased fees that are on their way.
The old road in most places is still going to be needed by people living in and around the towns which the new road would bypass. You cant just get rid of it, except maybe for the south side of the Brynderwyns which is the hardest to maintain and doesnt have any residences past the quarry.
Good point MC although I suspect the council will pay for the upkeep of the old road? But by the looks of the map they will be just going over there top of the old road for the flat bits near Waipu. A bit like what they did with Waikato expressway on the approach to Huntly and the TK section they just constructed it slowly over the old road.
Its not just residence, it’s access to all plots of land. And if it is tolled the old route needs to remain open as the free route.
The bits they duplicated the old SH1 on the Waikato expressway they often had to build additional access roads and overpasses to access them beside the road, which also require maintenance.
NZ drivers are too cheap to pay for it and the roads offer too little additional value. If they charge more than a couple dollars most people will just use the old route.
It’s not as safe as an expressway sure, but they are around 70% reduction in DSI. We could spend that 3 billion it’ll cost to add in the bypass for that dome valley section, and buy hundreds of kilometers of median barriers on other state highways that will now see nothing. We could buy far more lives saved, far more resilient than putting it all into one route.
Because the median barrier project has been so quick to roll out before. Median barriers are great don’t get me wrong. But we have issues to deal with namely emergency service can’t pass a truck as they are often too wide,farm machinery blocks the road and no one can pass, police can’t u turn on speeding vehicles, the roads they are put on don’t become any more resilient case and point Dome Valley, it doesn’t improve journey times in fact probably slows it down in many cases. This expressway is happening (well the Warkworth to Te Hana one will) there’s no proof 2+1 or whatever would’ve been cheaper as no one has or will ever look into that. It’s not an unreasonable spend only if you hate the idea of people saving time and if you hate the north getting a chance to grow. Voters will like this and it will be political suicide to cancel this project.
“that goat track”
Your response is disqualified for using that term.
Whangarei may get an expressway, especially with all the development we are forcing up there. But realistically, as the article says. for most of NZ, and to be fair north as well this would work.
Road re-alignment, be it a bridge/tunnel/viaduct even we could straighten out areas of roads.
make more 2+1 roads like sweden.
Bypass towns on state highways like they do in europe.
Tauranga being a strong case, lots of traffic is there due to sh2 having virtually no passing lanes and tons of small towns. Bypasses would work wonders, and make those towns not be perma clogged too
Exactly – most of the congestion on rural roads here is caused by bottle necks such as towns – not the road itself not having enough lanes.
Case in point – Tirau on a holiday weekend often backs up southbound, as does the area around the end of the Waikato Expressway where theres a big Mobil petrol station. But the 15 or so km in between there is just fine even though its still 1 lane each way.
Same with Wellsford, Te Hana, Warkworth in the old days, etc. Interestingly I have never been stuck in traffic in Kaiwaka even though it would be seeing the same traffic flow as Wellsford.
I still think the road to Whangarei should be replaced in one whack, but elsewhere in the country there could be some very efficient time savings by just bypassing towns and leaving the rest of the highway mostly the same.
Kaiwaka is essentially SH1 with a lower speed limit with a few driveways on left and right.
Wellsford is a town, you have shops, parking everywhere.
Japan has amazing traffic flow, one of the super duper things they do is essentially a complete non provision of street side parking. roads are for moving vehicles.
Roads are for moving people and allowing them access to places. In Wellsford that might be going from Auckland to Matauri Bay on holiday, a truck carrying goods from Whangarei to Hamilton or someone popping into town to do some shopping jobs on either side of the road.
I’m generally not a supporter of on-street parking but it is a reality in these sorts of towns where many people live rural. Even without this parking though there will be people needing to get from one side of the street to the other and they should be able to do that safely.
I’ve been stuck in Kaiwaka before that newish Gull petrol station causes some issues during busy periods. But yes the whole road needs to be replaced anyway. Anyone thinking a few fixes could fix it either doesn’t care about safety or just hasn’t driven the route enough to know the exisiting roads can never truly be fixed.
Many of the 2+1 roads in Sweden are being upgraded into 2+2 roads. The origin of 2+1 was to convert a 13m wide 2 lane road into a 3 lane road. It was cheaper to do this than build a new 2+2 road. I don’t believe they are converting 1+1 road into 2+1 anymore. All new highways I’ve driven on recently in Sweden have been 2+2.
Looking at all the expressways in other countries at this point in time, it is easy to feel envious. The glaring problem is we just can’t afford it, note the massive public service cuts we’re getting now to be able to afford RONS. They want to cut 1.4 billion from healthcare? That’s not even half the cost of the East-West link. They must think the public are idiots.
Public/private partnerships will end up costing us more. I was in Genova in Italy in 2018 when Ponte Morandi collapsed, a motorway bridge maintained by private companies. The entire network is in dire condition after decades of private company profit “growth” from cost cutting.
Actually we’re lucky we haven’t yet overcommitted to such massively unaffordable road projects yet. In the next few decades energy costs are going to balloon to the point where private vehicles won’t be feasable for the general public, and road freight will only survive by being heavily subsidised. Just as well we have the chance to invest in more more cost effective resiliant roads and sustainable modes now rather than build networks that will be useless!
Cool. If energy costs are going to balloon as you say then we can stop worrying about climate change. Maybe I will buy that gas patio heater now while I can still afford to enjoy it.
Miffy, you can save $3.50 an hour with a Temo heater. It must be true, I saw it on tv.
Gas patio heater might be just as clean as the grid in AKL right now. All 3 coal units at Huntly are roaring away and the gas turbine also going full blast. We are closer to hydro lake level “watch” than you think some lakes are well down for this time of year.
Yep. Only electricity generation is only 73% renewable at the moment and hydro is running at less than half capacity, so you’re probably right they are concerned about lake levels: https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/live-system-and-market-data/consolidated-live-data.
Still, it’s about four times ‘cleaner’ than the gas patio heater.
Freeze up in the Southern lakes all ice equals no water
running into the lakes. Plus not enough rain earlier in the season. I see all the small retailers are struggling while the gentailers are creaming it. Its all happened before and probably will happen again as people never seem to learn.
I probbaly should speak to the sun on how much it’s going to charge me to use my solar panels when charging my EV
lol
Once we built a more roads, there will be a lot more maintenance works than before to do to keep all the road in a good safe conditions. We do not have the resource or capacity to check all the road networks around NZ. I think this is the area is being overlooked as it will cost money to maintain all the roads around NZ.
If the road is built properly in the first place it should be less maintenance compared to the current route which has a new subsidence just about every day and not just on the Brynderwyns. Yes the Waikato expway was a disaster in some sections but think the Puhoi to Warkworth it hasn’t seemed to have needed any big maintenance yet.
Two projects I would rate as providing the most time saving value (not necessarily most value for money) would be bypasses of Tirau and Putaruru. The rest of SH1 is really not that bad, in the North Island south of Auckland at least. Obviously more safety interventions would be great.
Yes I agree by far the worst bit of SH1 in North Island is the whole thing north of Warkworth I can’t think of one nice section to drive because the only because the nice flat bit gets ruined by cars speeding up to 110 for passing lanes then slowing down to 80 outside these.
I would also add 2x bridge, to those 2x turns at the start of desert road heading south from turangi.
Oh yeah, straightening out about 3km of the Desert Road would save a fair few minutes of travel time!
Other countries have expressways because they have more traffic.
Those roads mostly carry 30,000+ vehicles a day and up. SH1 to Whangarei carries 8,000.
Yeah we can’t really afford it, not out of poverty, but because we don’t have enough people to use it.
New roads are a wonderful thing and if they are producing all the benefits that we are told then surely the road users won’t begrudge paying for them? Let’s toll them all. First the fly drive model of our international tourists will become more sustainable. Second, we won’t have to detour government services from almost everywhere else to pay for them.
$10 billion would fund Project Irex and leave billions to upgrade the long neglected Auckland Tauranga railway line. Just the exports alone being carried on that line would justify the spending. Anything left over could be used for improvements to SH1 Auckland to Whangarei bearing in mind the very modest use that road gets
Passenger rail.
End of rant
No that would pleas those people who glue themselves to roads. Because of them I hope rail gets nothing more.
Can you spell myopic
While they are building these expressways why not build an improved parallel rail line alongside for what probably amounts to a miniscule addition to the total. Then re purpose the old windy railway as a cycleway for tourists.
Exactly. Mono modal approach again and again and again.
Nothing learned over the last 60yrs.
or just build the railway and not the road. That way we could have 350, rather than 120km/h and cut, rather than increase emissions, not to mention greater safety.
I’m pro rail (obviously) but fail to see how building this will improve safety of the existing road. Why would they even build rail next to the first section there isn’t even heavy rail track on the other side so it’s pointless. Heavy rail budget should be saved to improve the H2A service and possible expansion to Tauranga. Passenger rail will never work in the north it’s too isolated. An improved bus that’s allowed to go 100 running along the new expressway is the solution.
Well I reckon passenger rail from Whangarei to Auckland would be pretty popular if it was frequent and around 2 hours.
Or at least designate and protect the alignment like they did beside SH20. If the project works (aka bringing Northland into the Golden Triangle) the better rail corridor will be needed. And if it doesn’t, then there isn’t any point building the road. Either they’ve got faith in the project, which will mean Whangarei and surrounds will require faster rail to Auckland, or it won’t.
I don’t suppose any one will know but are the big rigs still using highway 2 between Auckland and Tauranga or are the using the Waikato expressway then traversing the Kaimai range. They used to favor the flat route through Wahi but maybe its changed. More fuel used going over the hill plus wear on the brakes.
One totally off the subject question for you all at Greater Auckland – is the Lester Levy who has just been installed as the sole person running Health NZ, is he the same person as used to run Auckland Transport so well / so badly? Or is this a different Lester Levy? Some other kind of Levy ?
Same one, I read somewhere
A big problem on our state highways is the number of truck and trailer rigs with the changes with median barriers taking out passing lanes so climbing the dome or the brenderwyns (when open) gets to be very slow.Surely in the interest of the environment and road users sanity rail between Auckland and Whangarei makes sense.during the recent Brenderwyns closure trucks were sent via the paparoa Oakley road no one policed the 50 tonne limit I counted 18 logging truck+trailor units in 20 minutes then add Al the other heavys it’s a huge problem and the road surface has suffered.I note a big proportion of the cost to the tax payer is the traffic control we noticed 5 vehicles parked near our entranceway from 6:30 am until11am no road works hat 11one man got out backed a tractor off his truck and swept a small section or the highway no one else moved.Over a 5 week period there was a cone truck parked by our entrance idling from @7:30 until @5:30 with a driver no signs flashing or cones out no road works about 1/2 a K away was a traffic light controlled single lane with a second traffic control truck parked up out of the way idling all day doing nothing what does it cost tax payers nation wide the mind boggles Fulton Hogan must be smiling banking the $ and still we have problems with the brenderwyns.
Looking at those graphs it’s a bit surprising there isn’t talk of Ashburton or Timaru bypasses. Ashburton in particular would be relatively inexpensive as the land is all flat, and they’re planning to build a new bridge anyway, why not make it part of SH1 and make the old bridge the local one?
Australia expressways benefit from many of its cities living on the Melbourne to Sydney to Brisbane/Gold Coast corridor, which is all 4 lanes as you’d expect when connecting multi million person cities. Hobart (250k) to Launceston (90k), approximately 200km is also not anl 4 lane expressway
If you replace every expressway and highway with train (service) I would agree with this opinion piece.
Nobody has questioned the costs of building roads in NZ, compared to other countries including Australia. From my own observations, major highway projects are completed in a fraction of the time in Australia compared to NZ. Time is money.
Why don’t we get Australian capital and Australian contractors to build some of these highways as a benchmark for local contractors?
We also need a pragmatic approach to building improvements in our road infrastructure; the current gold plate standard would be fine for a country with oil or mineral riches, but we need the concept of 2lanes plus copious overtaking zones rather than magnificently graded 4 lane roads such as Puhoi to Warkworth.
Consider also the long term benefits of concrete roads as used in America and Europe; if we borrowed money over a long term to build these things, concrete roads would ensure that they were still fit for purpose when the loans are finally payed.
What happens when petrol goes to $7 or possibly $10 per litre then what happens to these new expressways.
The current state of the State Highway network requires $$$$ of tax payer subsidies to maintain and future proof it, let alone building any new fancy gold plated concrete RoNS and/or RoNS.
Where do you think
Wasn’t the lead contractor in the consortium that designed and built and are running Transmission Gully an Australian firm?
This project was hardly an exemplar in civil engineering competence and cost control.
What happens when petrol goes to $7 or possibly $10 per litre then what happens to these new expressways let alone the current state of the State Highway network that requires $$$$ to maintain and future proof the it, let alone building any new fancy gold plates RoNS and/or RoNS.
What happens if you mean? There’s never a guarantee it would ever be that much, if it gets to that price you’d see a lot more EVs and diesels would be running on some sort of domestically grown oil. Anyway you’d have much bigger problems around the globe if it cost that much tourism would crash etc.