Subscribe to RSS4th Lane on Newmarket Viaduct Opens
On the Southern Motorway at Newmarket from Monday, a fourth southbound lane will extend from the city to Greenlane.
The opening of the fourth lane marks the completion of Stage 1 of the NZTA’s $215M Newmarket Connection: Viaduct Replacement Project.
The extra capacity will remove the traditional peak-hour bottleneck at the Newmarket Viaduct, where four lanes have historically reduced to three.
NZTA says the new layout will create increased capacity, reduce peak-hour journey times to Greenlane by up to five minutes, create a more graduated and safer merge area for southbound traffic, and will also help manage the flow of southbound traffic from SH16 on to SH1.
Stage 2, the deconstruction of the original southbound viaduct between the two operational motorway carriageways, is already well underway and a reduced 70kph speed limit remains in place in both directions across the viaduct.
Drivers exiting at Greenlane should expect a slightly longer queue due to the faster arrival rate of vehicles at the off-ramp.
8 Comments
blah blah reduce traffic blah blah peak hour will be gone,
LOL a new lane means more cars are going to use it.
no solution!
do what Seoul did and just remove the freeway, make people think about other transport options!
This won’t relieve traffic, it will be just as congested before the lane was added and it cost what $215M, imagine how much improvement you could do to public transport for that price.
Bring on the Auckland Rail tunnel!!!!!
This will probably just move the congestion further south
5 minutes reduced? Tui Ad anyone? while im not opposed to reconstructing existing motorways and making it safer (higher barriers etc) i AM opposed to having extra lanes, it just moves the congestion down the road where there are 3 lanes again.
Within 3 months of it opening it will be snarled up again as the congestion moves 1 or 2kms down south. Unless oil prices a lot more people out of cars and onto TRAINS and BUSES.
This Government is absolutely insane with very poor transport policies devised by a Minister of Transport who is heavily influenced by donations from the trucking lobby. Pathetic.
You can hardly blame Joyce for this one because construction began when Labour was still in power. I suggest you get your facts right before you start ranting.
@Eric - read Joyce’s latest GPS if you think he’s not insanely anti PT http://transportblog.co.nz/2011/04/28/analysing-the-2012-government-policy-statement-‘engagement-document’/
I never said Joyce was Pro or Anti PC, I was merely responding to Jon Reeves’s comment which seemed to blame Joyce for the forth lane extension even though if that was true he would have to have been in power when Labour was, so apart from a Steven Joyce time traveling conspiracy, you really can’t blame him.