Wellington Urban Motorway

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Wellington Urban Motorway
State Highway 1
The Wellington Urban Motorway in 1994, looking north out of Wellington. The motorway shares a narrow stretch of reclaimed land with the Hutt Road, the North Island Main Trunk railway and the Wairarapa Line.
Route information
Maintained by NZ Transport Agency
Length	7 km (4.3 mi)
Existed	1968–present
History	Completed in 2007
Major junctions
North end	Ngauranga Ngauranga Interchange
Major intersections	Exit 1068 Ngauranga Interchange State Highway 2
South end	Te Aro Karo Drive (northbound) and Vivian Street (southbound)
Location
Country	New Zealand
Primary destinations	Ngauranga, Kaiwharawhara, Thorndon, Kelburn, Te Aro, Wellington CBD, Waterfront
Highway system
New Zealand state highways Motorways and expressways List

The Wellington Urban Motorway, part of State HIghway 1, is the main road into and out of Wellington, New Zealand. It is 7 km long, ranges from three to seven lanes wide, and extends from the base of the Ngauranga Gorge into the Wellington CBD.

From the Ngauranga Interchange (State Highways 1 & 2), the motorway travels south across reclaimed land alongside the Wairarapa and North Island Main Trunk railway lines. After passing through the suburb of Kaiwharawhara, the motorway travels across the 1335m long Thorndon overbridges, the longest bridges in the North Island, before entering the suburb of Thorndon. Shortly after, it enters the Terrace Tunnel before terminating at Vivian Street in Wellington City.

Design[edit]

Following the Second World War the National Roads Board, an arm of the Ministry of Works, began the search for better road access to Wellington. In the late 1950s they proposed a motorway between Ngauranga and Wellington Airport. Construction of a motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay began with earthmoving works and reclamation in 1959.^[1] Difficulties planning a route through the city led to U.S. consultants, De Leuw Cather, being engaged in 1963 to design a scheme. De Leuw Cather assumed that the Ngauranga – Thorndon motorway that was under construction would be completed, and proposed to connect to it with either a 'Waterfront' motorway along Aotea Quay, Waterloo Quay and Jervois Quay to Kent Terrace, or a 'Foothill' motorway crossing Thorndon and the city to the Basin Reserve and Mt Victoria Tunnel.^[2] The Foothill Motorway was their preferred option. The alignment and scale of the motorway between Ngauranga and the Bowen Street overbridge as built very closely matches the original 'Foothill' proposal, with the exception that the proposed interchange at Ngaio Gorge (with on- and off-ramps over the railway to Kaiwharawhara) was never completed, although the stumps of a southbound on-ramp and northbound on- and off-ramps remain visible today broadly parallel to Kaiwharawhara railway station. Beyond the Tinakori Road on-ramp and Hawkestone Street off-ramp going south, the motorway is a considerably scaled down concept from what was initially proposed, and it was never extended as far as the Basin Reserve.

1968: Ngauranga to Aotea Quay[edit]

The first phase of the motorway was a 2.7 mi (4.3 km) section between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay which began with reclamation works in 1959 and opened in April 1968 as part of State Highway 2.^[1][3] This relieved the chronic congestion at the traffic signal controlled intersections at the bottom of Ngauranga Gorge and Ngaio Gorge where long delays and peak time queues of several kilometres occurred during the morning and evening peaks. This section included several traffic overbridges, a rail access tunnel for the Gear Meat Company and the Ngauranga Railway Bridge.^[1]

1972: Aotea Quay to Hawkestone Street[edit]

The motorway was extended in phases: to Murphy Street in 1969, May Street in 1970 and as far as the Hawkestone Street off-ramp in 1972.^[4]

Hawkestone Street to Boulcott Street[edit]

Bolton Street cemetery[edit]

The plans for the motorway took it through the middle of the Bolton Street cemetery. The cemetery had long been closed to new interments, but had huge historical significance as the burial place of many early Wellington settlers, and there was controversy about disturbing the graves. Between 1968 and 1971 the cemetery was closed to public access while about 3700 burials in the way of the motorway were exhumed. Most of the remains were reinterred in a large vault underneath a memorial lawn at the cemetery, while others were reinterred at other cemeteries. Salvaged gravestones were shifted to other parts of the cemetery. A footbridge was built over the motorway to link the two now-separate halves of the cemetery.^[5]

1978: Boulcott Street to Vivian Street[edit]

The last major extension was completed in 1978, with the construction of the Terrace Tunnel and the termination of the motorway at the Ghuznee and Vivian Street intersections with Willis Street. The motorway was officially opened on 31 May 1978 by Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. Between Ngauranga and Vivian Street, the motorway had five on-ramps, five off-ramps, 11 bridges crossing over it and six bridges underneath it. The cost to that date was $68.9 million.^[4]

Second tunnel[edit]

The original concept was for six lanes to proceed to Willis Street, with the existing three-lane Terrace Tunnel being the northbound route with a duplicate southbound tunnel.^[6] The current alignment of the motorway up to the Terrace off-ramp clearly shows how six lanes were curtailed to three, by using the Terrace interchange to lose a lane each way, and a third lane merging southbound towards the remaining tunnel. About half of the southbound carriageway has been built but is unpaved, including the Bowen Street on-ramp which is now a walkway. The Shell Gully/Clifton Tce carpark under the motorway, accessible from the Terrace, clearly shows the pillars, and part of the carriageway (now part of the carpark) that would have carried the additional three southbound lanes to the second Terrace Tunnel. The northbound carriageway is almost complete with one exception, the Bowen Street off-ramp which would have been a counter-clockwise loop splitting off from the Tinakori Road off-ramp. A section of the Tinakori Road off-ramp has a different type of barrier to the rest of the off-ramp, showing where it would have been.

Funding for the second tunnel was indefinitely shelved in the 1970s due to fiscal pressures on government, and the beginning of far greater scrutiny of the quality of highway expenditure. It was clear that until the Wellington Urban Motorway was connected to State Highway 1 at Ngauranga Gorge, a single Terrace Tunnel would be adequate for the traffic demands of the 1970s.

Ngauranga Interchange[edit]

The Ngauranga Interchange connecting the motorway to State Highway 1 to the north opened in 1984, removing the State Highway designation from the Hutt Road south of Ngauranga, and making the Wellington Urban Motorway between Ngauranga and Aotea Quay both State Highway 1 and 2. While the Ngauranga Interchange relieved the severe congestion experienced at the traffic light controlled intersection at Ngauranga, it did double the usage of the rest of the motorway, generating peak-time congestion at the end of the motorway, and in the morning peaks with merging traffic from the Hutt.

Extension past Willis Street[edit]

Meanwhile, the original plans to extend the motorway beyond Willis Street had been significantly reviewed, with a new plan for an "arterial extension" at a 70 km/h standard proposed along the motorway alignment towards the existing Mount Victoria Tunnel (the original full motorway plan had been scrapped, as it would have meant the destruction of the Basin Reserve, and an unaffordable duplicate Mount Victoria Tunnel). That plan was shelved in 1993 because of funding constraints. Transit New Zealand prioritised a three-stage approach to addressing the traffic issues between the Terrace Tunnel and the Mt Victoria Tunnel:

Stage 1. Conversion of Buckle St to one-way westbound, and Vivian St from Taranaki Street to Cambridge Terrace to one-way eastbound operation. This was seen as a short-term measure to prepare for Stage 2.

Stage 2. Widening of Arthur Street and extension towards Victoria and Willis St to a new on-ramp underneath Vivian St. Closure of the Vivian St on-ramp and construction of a new off-ramp at Vivian St. Vivian St would be converted to one-way eastbound operation between Willis St and Taranaki St. The Ghuznee St off-ramp would be closed and Ghuznee St reverted to two-way operation. Stage 2 was seen as a medium-term measure, providing sufficient relief for ten years before consideration of Stage 3.

Stage 3. Construction of an almost entirely cut-and-cover grade-separated arterial tunnel highway from the Terrace Tunnel to Mt Victoria Tunnel, resembling the 1980s "arterial extension" proposal. This was seen as the long-term proposal.

Between 1995 and 2002, Transit New Zealand pursued the Stage 2 proposal, which became known as the Wellington Inner City Bypass. Given the appeals and opposition to Stage 2 from some groups, Transit quietly shelved further work on Stage 3 as it focused on completing the one-way system across Te Aro.

21st century[edit]

Until 2006 the northbound motorway started at the Vivian Street on-ramp. On 28 December 2006 this on-ramp was closed, with a new northbound on-ramp created at Karo Drive as part of the Wellington Inner City Bypass.

Until 2007 the southbound motorway terminated at the Ghuznee Street off-ramp. On 25 March 2007 this off-ramp was closed, and traffic diverted to a new Vivian Street off-ramp along the line of the former on-ramp.

The motorway is the subject of the ongoing Ngauranga to Airport Strategic Study, which is investigating Wellington's future transport growth needs.

Interchanges[edit]

Territorial authority	Location	km	mi	Destinations	Notes
Wellington City	Ngauranga	1,068.0	663.6	SH 1 north (Centennial Highway) – Porirua, Palmerston North	Wellington Urban Motorway begins
				SH 2 (Hutt Road) – Hutt Valley, Masterton	Northbound exit and southbound entrance
	Thorndon	1,070.9	665.4	Aotea Quay – Pipitea	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		1,071.8	666.0	Murphy Street – Thorndon	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
		1,072.2	666.2	Hawkestone Street – Thorndon	Southbound only
		1,072.5	666.4	Tinakori Road – Thorndon	Northbound only
	Wellington Central	1,073.0	666.7	The Terrace – Wellington Central	Southbound exit and northbound entrance
	Wellington	1,074.0	667.4	Terrace Motorway Tunnel
	Te Aro	1,075.0	668.0	SH 1 southbound (Vivian Street) – Airport, Seatoun SH 1 northbound (Karo Drive)	Wellington Urban Motorway ends
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

See also[edit]

• List of motorways and expressways in New Zealand

References[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wellington Urban Motorway.