Skip to main content

New Zealand link

A major milestone has been achieved in New Zealand on a major road project that is intended to deal with a major traffic bottleneck in the city of Auckland. The launching gantry team has now installed the last segment of the new northbound viaduct, a key stage in the Newmarket Viaduct Replacement project. There is currently a 1.5m gap between the segments. So, on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th December the two viaducts will be cemented together in an 18 hour procedure known as the Stitch. From then until the e
May 15, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
RSSA major milestone has been achieved in New Zealand on a major road project that is intended to deal with a major traffic bottleneck in the city of Auckland. The launching gantry team has now installed the last segment of the new northbound viaduct, a key stage in the Newmarket Viaduct Replacement project. There is currently a 1.5m gap between the segments. So, on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th December the two viaducts will be cemented together in an 18 hour procedure known as the Stitch. From then until the end of January 2012, work will continue to prepare the new northbound half of the viaduct for traffic. The Switch of traffic to the new link will happen over the weekend of 28th-30th January 2012. The work has been on-going for some time and on 28th September 2009, the project team began the construction of the new southbound viaduct. In the two and a bit years since then, 468 concrete segments each weighing an average of 80tonnes have been cast in a yard in East Tamaki, transported to site, lifted into place, tensioned and secured to create the new southbound and new northbound viaducts. The project forms part of the Route 1 Southern Motorway, which feeds Auckland from the South and continues through the city and over the Harbour Bridge. The Route 16 Waterview tunnel will complete the Western motorway loop, which will enable through traffic to by-pass Auckland city altogether. This will reduce congestion over the bridge, the main transport link in all of New Zealand. The project will also incentivise heavy traffic to use the by-pass route, prolonging the life of the bridge. Eventually, the bridge will need to be replaced with a new bridge or a tunnel, and the existence of the by-pass will help to make that more feasible.

Related Content

  • HA dismantles footbridge over M5 in England
    January 3, 2013
    Contractors worked solidly throughout the night during one Saturday and early Sunday morning in November (2012) to dismantle the Pegwell Brake footbridge over the M5 near Bristol, south west England. The concrete footbridge, located between junctions 16 and 17, needed to be demolished to make way for a new steel pedestrian bridge suitable for high-sided vehicles to pass under when the managed motorway is fully operational and the hard shoulder is used as a running lane. The dismantling and removal of the
  • Tunnel essential to reduce congestion
    February 21, 2012
    Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City's dense population, which was estimated to be 10,680 persons/km2 in 2005, is, over the next ten years, set to benefit from the completion of the Thu Thiem Urban Area project, which will provide homes for up to 200,000 people.
  • Let’s Boogie in a new tunnel
    July 7, 2020
    The new Victory Boogie Woogie Tunnel will be the most sustainable tunnel in the Netherlands.
  • Auckland’s causeway project
    April 4, 2014
    When it is finished in early 2017, the causeway on Auckland’s North-western Motorway, State Highway 16, will have been raised 1.5m to stop flooding at extreme high tides. There will be four lanes city-bound and four/five lanes westbound with dedicated bus lanes in each direction, and the existing North-western cycleway that runs alongside it will be upgraded.