Tomorrow there will be a huge traffic jam heading north of Auckland, particularly as the result of the Warkworth bottleneck. The same thing happens every December 27th, everyone says how horrible the traffic jam is, and the “need” for the holiday highway is supposedly underlined. Here’s what happened last year:
Thousands of motorists spent hours stewing in traffic jams between Auckland’s Northern Gateway toll road and Warkworth yesterday.
Traffic started banking up north of Puhoi at about 10.30am, and three hours later was jammed for about 25km from Warkworth back to the Hillcrest Rd bridge over the southern end of the toll road at Orewa.
The worst problems were where lanes merged, whether at the end of passing lanes or at the northbound entry to the Johnstones Hill tunnel at the Puhoi end of the toll road.
It was not until 4pm that the Transport Agency reported a relatively free flow had been restored to the tunnel, which is confined to one northbound lane for safety reasons at the other end, where traffic from the alternative free coastal route through Orewa merges with State Highway 1.
Transport Agency northern highways manager Tommy Parker said State Highway 16 through Helensville remained free-flowing throughout yesterday as an alternative route to Wellsford, and drivers should always consider that option if travelling further north over the holiday period.
It seems silly to spend $1.7 billion on a road to solve a problem that only happens once a year. The alternative is pretty simple – just don’t drive north tomorrow. If you have to, go early or late or via State Highway 16.
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Those Variable Message Signs sit there in Auckland doing nothing most of the time. Can’t they put up a message saying something like: “SH1 to Warkworth, severe congestion, consider alternative route” and/or “Traffic for Whangarei & north, please use SH16”?
They were saying precisely this today.
What’s the possibility of introducing limited time congestion charging? Politically a no-go in this environment, of course, but as a practicality?
The problems have not been helped by the ridiculous “road improvements” that were recently carried out at the SH1/Woodcocks Rd junction at Warkworth, where a new set of lights were installed and the road widened to two lanes. Problem is that 300m after this, everything narrows down to single lane to go over the bridge over the Mahurangi river and then on to the notorious Hill St. junction, where it all snarls up again. (2 hours for a journey from Albany to Warkworth today apparently). I know that they are going to work on this section next after the summer, but the solution is so simple in the meantime. Turn off the lights and post Pointsmen, or traffic cops, at Woodcocks Road and Hill Street for the few hours when the problem exists. The traffic cops can’t rack up any tickets anyway, because the traffic is not moving, so no revenue gathering there, so put them to some useful purpose.
Christmas eve the lights were out of order and traffic was flowing like a dream with everyone taking due care when crossing the junctions. Simple isn’t it?
I drove down through Warkworth mid afternoon today (from Whangarei). Warkworth was fine, both ways, but prior to that there was a 7km long carpark leading (northbound) into Wellsford. The traffic queue extended beyond the Dome Valley
Curiously there was very little traffic going south and I had no problems visiting Coromandel from Auckland 25/26/27 Dec at the legal speed limit all the way both ways, and very small queues at the Kopu bridge, no different to usual delays. Shows where Aucklanders go I guess. We really are cut off from everything south of the Bombays.
Thinking of holiday time dilemmas… I was wondering how much a ferry or two would cost to take additional traffic across the kopu bridge…
If I go to Whangamata I just go via Waihi to avoid the problem altogether.
Herald article about the queues
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10696822
One wonders how many people would have chosen to hop on a train if NZ actually offered such things as opposed to shutting down railways to justify motorways.
Especially if the trains had flat-beds for drive on-drive off transporting of cars. Sure you could only take about 100 cars at a time, unless they got special car transporters with double decks, but that’s 100 cars fewer on the road. Run a few of those a day and you’re talking a not-insignificant percentage of the cars doing the trip.
Or perhaps they could introduce a poor planning congestion charge, so that anyone driving on certain routes on certain days pays an extra fee. Perhaps have the police stationed at the queues for the Kopu Bridge and on the Northern Gateway (when it gets down to a crawl). Breath-test the drivers and sting them for $20, and maybe they’ll plan ahead for next year. They could do the same on SH1 north out of Wellington on Friday and Sunday evenings.