Behind the Butchers Shop Wall, A Tunnel Emerges

in General by Jon C — November 3, 2009 at 11:42 am | 2 comments

Construction of the Victoria Park tunnel is just kicking off and will continue until 2014.

Land Transport has taken over the bottom floor of the ACP Media building on the corner of Fanshawe and Beaumont St and ,oddly, considering the money being spent on the project, gives the appearance it could not afford double glazing - only $2 shop brown paper to plaster its windows so we couldn’t peak in to their planning sessions.

While I was snooping around, one local wit in the area today dubbed it the “Butchers Shop,” explaining traditional old fashioned butchers shops covered their windows with such cheap brown unattractive paper.

The first group of workers arrived yesterday and, while there’s not much to see yet, there will soon be plenty of activity around St Mary’s Bay. That area is getting:

• Five traffic lanes for northbound traffic with provision for bus priority when necessary.
• Five traffic lanes and a bus shoulder lane for southbound traffic.
• Shelly Beach overbridge to be extended to accommodate the extra northbound lane.
• Noise walls along the western edge.
• Pedestrian overbridge linking Jacob’s Ladder with the Westhaven area.
• Increased open space and better public access at the former HMNZS Ngapona site.

The northbound tunnel is being constructed beneath Victoria Park and the existing viaduct will be retained and upgraded for southbound traffic, combined with lane additions through St Mary’s Bay. Victoria Park will be kept as an open space, although I heard the skate park will be history.

As part of the environmental features, there will be transparent noise walls along St Mary’s Bay and solid noise walls along Freeman’s Bay.

The project is primarily needed to assist with congestion relief on the motorway system and to provide for the Northern Busway on the North Shore. The tunnel will ease the current bottleneck created by the Victoria Park viaduct and the overall widening of the motorway carriageway will make best use of the unused capacity of the Harbour Bridge. The tunnel is designed for three lanes because there are three northbound lanes that emerge from the Central Motorway Junction . The viaduct has four lanes (two in each direction) at present and these are all being retained for southbound traffic.

Tags: Victoria park Victoria Park tunnel