Subscribe to RSSPakuranga Bottleneck Work
Works to reduce bottlenecks at the Pakuranga end of the South-Eastern Highway are due to be completed soon.
The left turning lanes coming off South Eastern Highway into Ti Rakau Drive have been lengthened to improve the capacity and reduce congestion at the intersection. The lane taking traffic from Ti Rakau Drive onto South Eastern Highway has also been lengthened to improve merging.
With the new layout, vehicles from Ti Rakau Drive are able to use the lengthened lane to build up to speed before a seamless merge with traffic on South Eastern Highway. Vehicles will no longer need to queue at the intersection and wait for a gap before being able to merge in with the traffic.
The intersection improvements are interim works to help deal with congestion issues until longer term major projects around Pakuranga begin.
Howick Local Board Chair Michael Williams says although the improvements are relatively minor in the context of the bigger AMETI project it is significant that they are the first to finish.
“After years of discussion this shows that we are getting on with the project. Drivers will be able to see some real benefits.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what impact this has on improving traffic congestion now, but we are still working hard on getting a longer term solution for people in Howick, Pakuranga and Botany.”
Auckland Transport Major Projects Manager Rick Walden says the aim of the interim intersection improvements is to provide some relief for commuters immediately.
“There are significant projects planned for the future in this area, but these interim works will reduce queuing at the intersection.
“Work is also underway on further developing concepts for the busway that would run from Panmure to Pakuranga and towards Botany.
There are still plenty of bottlenecks!
Auckland Transport calls it the first work to be complete on the AMETI project, which is aimed at reducing traffic congestion and improving public transport in the eastern suburbs.
Plans for AMETI projects in Panmure will be on show at a public open day from 10am-1pm, 9 April at Panmure Community Hall, 7-13 Pilkington Rd.
5 Comments
Every major piece of roading done since the 1950′s has been to reduce congestion. Never worked, ever.
“There are still plenty of bottlenecks!”
There always will be! There’s no way to achieve this without concreting the whole of Auckland, even then we’d have congestion and so-called bottlenecks which would lead to the suggestion of building a double layered concrete pad on top of the city…..time to move on. Auckland’s roads are complete, let’s build the other bit that part called PT which barely exists.
Lengthening a merge lane isn’t exactly building a new road to “fix” congestion, people. Sometimes roading tweaks are perfectly justified in the context of a local problem, and these appear to be such.
rtc, if we concreted all of Auckland, we’d finally be rid of bottle necks. No idea how we would live on that concrete ice-rink though. Maybe we could live in flying houses. Our government already lives in cloud castles, so it would only be apt.
As to Matt - you are fully right. However, I get sick of every rail, bus or cycling “tweak” or “fix” having to go BEGGING for money, while for roads, the pockets always seem open.
To the tune of 150 million dollar overspend every year above their already horrendously high state highway budgets.
“The lane taking traffic from Ti Rakau Drive onto South Eastern Highway has also been lengthened to improve merging. With the new layout, vehicles from Ti Rakau Drive are able to use the lengthened lane to build up to speed before a seamless merge with traffic on South Eastern Highway.”
Yeah, but they don’t. I travel this road every single day and come from Reeves road straight across to the South Eastern and every single day, 99.9% of motorists coming down the new lengthened lane still don’t know how to use it and merge in the first ten yards of the lane. If they’d built a concrete median barrier for the first 50m so you couldn’ t merge, it might have worked. As it is, all there is now is a lane that isn’t used and still the same crappy traffic flows because people are dumb and don’t know how to drive. Sorry but this drives me mad. Instead of building more and more roads, maybe they should be spending that money on teaching people how to use the roads that we already have.