What does $630m of highway look like?
Standing on fresh asphalt, Ken Saville looked at the safety barrier on the roadside and thought the cables might be a little bit too tight.
The new $630 million road was pretty good, but there was always room for improvements.
Saville, of Paraparaumu, joined more thqan 20,000 people pouring onto the Kapiti expressway, north of Wellington, for an open day on Saturday that gave the community a chance to kick the tyres on a project that opens to traffic this month.
The road will eventually link to the $850m Transmission Gully road network in the south, and a third $330m section to the north after 2020.
On Saturday Ed Hurst came all the way from Breaker Bay, Wellington, to take a ride on the 5km section, opened to the community for the event.
His vehicle of choice was a velomobile - a three-wheeled bicycle-car - low-slung, fully enclosed in fibre glass, and in a speedy red and black colour scheme.
He said he might look at shifting north to the Kapiti Coast now the expressway was completed and the other sections were under way.
Car enthusiast Saville was part of a convoy of vintage cars that drove the new road from Waikanae to the southern exit on Poplar Ave, and apart from the odd minor quibble with the safety cables, he was impressed.
His mate Mike Cartmer, of Paraparaumu, said during the drive, the sense of dislocation from the land surrounding the expressway had been ‘‘incredible’’.
By noon there was a 20-minute line to board 11 buses running nonstop between Te Moana Rd in the north and Te Roto Drive in the south.
Organisers from the Alliance, the consortium that built the expressway, said more than 21,000 people were estimated to have turned up to check out the road.
Jacqui Bennett, and her daughter Emily Veale, 13, had chosen to take a walk along the northbound lanes of the road instead.
Bennett admitted it was the first time they had walked on the road - but not quite the first time they’d had a peek at it over the embankments.
The expressway is an 18-kilometre four-lane road through the Kapiti Coast and includes 18 bridges and 16km of walking and cycleways.