The long battle for a road to the North
Will they ever finish that section of motorway? When will those extra lanes be open? Why is construction taking so long? Transport reporter Bernard Orsman takes a look at the progress of some of our biggest motorway projects.
State Highway 1 to Northland has become a political game of who holds the purse strings.
The election of a Labour-led Government with the Green Party on board has seen the cancellation of National’s “Roads of National Significance” in favour of road safety improvements to reduce the number of road deaths and serious injuries.
For motorists driving north on SH1 this has meant a new road from Warkworth to Wellsford has gone on ice.
In its place, work has started on $30m of safety improvements along the dangerous stretch of road through Dome Valley.
Every region has its black spots with scalloped skid marks, dotted with white crosses. Just north of Warkworth, up a narrow windy hill, it’s Dome Valley, known as the “Killing Fields”.
Since 2000 it has claimed 36 lives and left 102 people with serious injuries.
Just before Christmas, Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter held a media conference at Dome Valley to announce flexible median and side barriers will be installed to prevent head-on crashes and collisions with poles, trees or ditches. The road shoulders will be widened and intersections improved.
The work will be finished in 2021. Ian Davis, chief fire officer with the Warkworth Volunteer Fire Brigade, has attended crashes in Dome Valley for 30 years.
He supported the safety improvements, but would like to see a new four-lane highway built along a new route from Warkworth to Wellsford that bypasses Dome Valley.
Genter says the highway will cost $1.6 billion to deliver 25km of safe road. For that money, the Government will make 870km of safety improvements to highways, and a similar length of local roads.
Before being thrown out of Government, National promised a fourlane highway from Wellsford to Whanga¯rei.
The NZ Transport Agency produced an indicative route in 2017 for the Warkworth to Wellsford leg, passing west of Wellsford, crossing SH1 just south of Wellsford, then passing east of Wellsford and Te Hana before rejoining SH1 north of Mangawhai Rd.
The straighter road was expected to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 80 per cent, and won the backing of the National Road Carriers and Northland leaders, who view SH1 as the region’s economic lifeline.
The project is in the investigation phase with the lodging of designation and consents planned for mid this year. NZTA is taking steps to protect land required for the new highway, but construction remains at least 10 years away.
That leaves Pu¯hoi to Warkworth, a new 18.5km stretch of SH1, kicked off by Prime Minister John Key days after his shock resignation in December
2016, declaring it “part of a long-term strategy of getting up to Whanga¯rei”.
It is part of National’s “Roads of National Significance” programme and costing $710 million.
Since the turning of the first sod in a paddock outside Warkworth, the highway, officially named Ara Tuhono, has progressed well from the Johnstone’s Hill tunnels just south of Pu¯hoi to just south of the Kaipara Flat Rd, north of Warkworth.
The long, hot summer has been a godsend to shift 4 million cubic metres of rock and soil at a crucial point in the project, being undertaken in a public private partnership (PPP) between NZTA and the Northern Express Group joint venture between Fletcher and Spanish construction firm Acciona, known as NX2.
During the first earthworks in the
2018-2019 summer, 1 million cu m of material was moved by the group.
In total, 7m cu m of fill is expected to be dug, of which 5m cu m will be used as fill. Seven new bridges will be built and there will be a significant planning programme of native vegetation to replace 162ha of felling, much of that pine trees.
Under the PPP, NZ2 will finance, design, construct, manage and maintain the new stretch of SH1 for 25 years after it is completed towards the end of 2021.
The new road, derided by critics as a “holiday highway” for Aucklanders driving to beach homes at Omaha, is seen by others as ensuring better and
Every region has its black spots with scalloped skid marks, dotted with white crosses. Just north of Warkworth, up a narrow windy hill, it’s Dome Valley, known as the ‘Killing Fields’.
safer access through Warkworth and further north.
Separate to the motorway project, Auckland Transport is due to start work later this year on a $63m Matakana link road to improve the infamous Hill St intersection bottleneck. It will initially be a two-lane road, but widened to four lanes costing an extra $16m as traffic demand grows.
Over the coming decades, Warkworth and surrounds will follow Albany, going from a quiet rural town to suburban sprawl with thousands of new homes and businesses.