Waterview Connection


The Waterview Connection is a motorway section through west/central Auckland, New Zealand. It connects State Highway 20 in the south at Mt Roskill to State Highway 16 in the west at Point Chevalier, and is a part of the Western Ring Route.
The Waterview Connection is 4.5 km long, of which 2.5 km are in the form of twin tunnels. The Waterview Tunnel supersedes the Lyttelton Road Tunnel as New Zealand's longest road tunnels. By 2026, the link is expected to carry 83,000 vehicles a day. There are three lanes of traffic in each tunnel.

Planning history

The project had an extensive planning history, with the earliest consultation in 2000, though the proposal for a route roughly in the area dates from much earlier.

Routes considered

Several routes were considered, all being variations of either a connection to SH16 along the Rosebank Peninsula or at the Great North Road interchange at Waterview. It was generally assumed that below-ground construction would be required where AR3 passed through Avondale Heights, to a maximum depth of 41 m. On the basis of technical and environmental assessments, the AR3 and AW4 route options were dismissed.
Transit New Zealand selected the Waterview connection as its preferred route, with the support of the Auckland City Council and Waitakere City Council, over the Rosebank option, which was the preferred route of the Auckland Regional Council.
The previous AW1 and AW4 routes favoured a New North Road interchange with ramps facing south, and full connections at the Waterview interchange. The preferred route was announced with a Great North Road interchange replacing New North Road and no southbound access at Waterview. This proved unpopular with local residents, and it was considered unlikely a bored tunnel could accommodate an interchange because of its depth.

Bored tunnels preferred

On 7 February 2008, bored tunnels were announced as Transit's preferred option. The NZ Transport Agency's preferred option was a pair of two-lane tunnels costing $1.89 billion, rather than a pair of three-lane tunnels costing $2.14 billion. NZTA's traffic modelling indicated that two-lane tunnels would reach capacity within 10 years of operation.
Transit NZ's board resolved to seek a designation over land for a $1.89 billion pair of motorway tunnels through Waterview. The board called for a report from officials on managing fumes from the tunnel "to benchmark the proposed approach incorporated in the design work to date against current international best practice". In response to submissions questioning the adequacy of just two traffic lanes running in each direction, it sought a comparative assessment of the operational performance and costs of providing three-lane tunnels, initially estimated at $2.14 billion.

Public-private partnership investigation

The government set up a joint public-private sector steering group to investigate the feasibility of a public-private partnership as a procurement method for the Waterview Connection Project, evaluating the PPP alongside a conventional public sector procurement method to determine how the two methods compared in terms of value for money. The steering group had as an independent chairperson, Sir Brian Elwood, and reported directly to the Ministers of Finance and Transport.
It was announced on 26 August 2008 that the steering group had advised the Government that a public-private partnership - which would require a $2 toll per trip - was the best way of building the new $2 billion section of the city's Western Ring Route. Transport Minister Annette King asked officials to do more work on several critical factors before the Government committed to a PPP.

Air quality concerns

In October 2008 the NZ Transport Agency released report findings which showed that tunnel emissions would have a negligible effect on local air quality. These findings were disputed by Waterview Primary School representatives, who claimed that the report hadn't taken into account the impact of tolling "which could add more traffic to surface roads", hadn't given sufficient consideration to "international best practice on air filtering", and had failed to account for "ventilation fans being turned off during off-peak times, allowing emissions to escape through the tunnel openings". They also asked for reconsideration of "taking a section of the school’s playing field for use during the five-year construction period".
Concern was also expressed by developer Greg Burgess, who had consent for building 83 new homes 19 metres away from the Owairaka ventilation stack. The developer wanted the ventilation stack moved further away, but there were worries that fumes might be pushed closer to Christ the King School.

Request to reconsider Rosebank route

The Auckland Regional Council requested NZTA to reconsider whether the proposed Waterview Connection was the most cost-effective way of completing the Western Ring Road, with a reconsideration of the costs and benefits of
the alternative Rosebank route.

Cost of bored tunnels questioned

In 2009, the CEO of Federated Farmers, Conor English, announced that Federated Farmers wanted the government to review the tunnelling with a view to cancelling it. He argued in an editorial that the project represented a "tunnel with no hill", costed at that time at about $1.9 billion or about $600 million a kilometre. Therefore, the motorway should instead be built as a surface road, and the savings invested into water storage projects benefitting farming.
On 30 January 2009 Transport Minister Steven Joyce announced his concern with the $3.16 billion cost of three-lane tunnels. Because he was "not comfortable" with the idea of reducing the tunnels to two lanes with no ability to enlarge them for future traffic demand, he gave officials until April to review all options for a connection of State Highway 20 to the Northwestern Motorway at Waterview, including a potentially disruptive surface route through Mount Albert and previously discarded "cut and cover" proposals. He was unable to predict a completion date for Auckland's 42 km western ring route, saying officials regarded a 2015 target of the previous Labour government as "aspirational".

Combination tunnel method announced

On 13 May 2009 NZTA announced its new preferred route for the Waterview Connection motorway as a combination of surface, bored tunnel and cut and cover tunnel. The tunnels would be constructed with provision for three lanes in each direction.
A raised surface motorway through Alan Wood Park and the short section between the bored and cut and cover tunnel portals near the Great North Rd and Blockhouse Bay Rd intersection were the largest differences between this new preferred route and the previous bored tunnel option. At $1,165 million, it was cheaper than the $1,974 million two-lane bored tunnel option and the $2,335 million three-lane bored tunnel option.

Combined surface/tunnel alignment confirmed

On 11 September 2009 the NZTA Board confirmed the combined surface/tunnel alignment for the Waterview Connection. The Board was confident that the project's effects could be managed in a fair and reasonable way and that many of the community concerns would be addressed through good design. Over the following two months the NZTA was to provide the Board with details on how a range of issues would be addressed, including:
  • the subsequent process of engagement to be adopted with respect to the community and other stakeholders;
  • air quality effects;
  • open space replacement and enhancement;
  • noise mitigation;
  • other environmental impacts;
  • tunnel design options to minimise or remove the separation between the 'bored' and 'cut and cover' tunnels;
  • urban design – including cycle and walkway connections and access; and investigating a 'central' interchange;
Subject to board approval on 27 November 2009 of a final design for the motorway, the NZTA was to lodge a land designation application early in 2010 with Auckland City, for a construction start in 2011-12 and completion in 2015.

"Final" alignment confirmed

On 21 December 2009, NZTA announced that the tunnels would be built further east as continuous tunnels without an gap halfway, and expressed confidence that they would be able to be completed within the original project budget. NZTA argued that this would be the most cost-effective option for constructing this section, and would require 205 houses to be bulldozed. Underground land would need to be purchased from 105 properties. The board had decided against including a central interchange at New North Road. Construction on the project was proposed to start in mid to late 2011 with an anticipated completion date in the 2015/16 financial year.
The revised route map shows road header constructed tunnels running from Alan Wood Park opposite Range View / Stewart Roads, under the north end of Hendon Ave and under Pak 'n Save, continuing under the ends of Powell St & Craddock St, under the Phyllis St softball fields, under the Oakley Creek waterfall and reserve with a final section of cut & cover under Great North Rd and emerging in Waterview Park as per previous options.

"Road of National Significance" and fast-tracking

In 2009, Minister of Transport Steven Joyce declared the project one of the "Roads of National Significance". Crucially, this step allowed the application to be considered by a new governmental body, the Environmental Protection Authority, a fast-track process which bypasses normal resource consent and Environment Court processes, in favour of a fixed 9-month process led by a "Board of Enquiry", whose decision cannot be appealed except on points of law. The decision to fast-track was cited as necessary to avoid approval delays which had held up other projects for over 15 years, though local groups were pessimistic about their chance to achieve fair mitigation within the tight process.
The tunnel sections would now be approximately 2.4 km long. Also included in the fast-tracked project was the decision to undertake significant capacity-related widening works on State Highway 16, which are outside of the Waterview area, which were bundled into the application process which consists of 54 resource consents and 7 designations.
With around 40 folders of materials and plans to go through, local community groups expressed anger in October 2010 that they would have only four weeks to formulate submissions regarding the fast-tracked applications. Calls by Auckland City Council and an affected community board to extend the deadline were rejected on the grounds of the tight statutory timeframe.