North Shore City major roading project gets funding approval

Construction funding approval for a $36m North Shore City roading project has been confirmed, with the first stage of enabling works set to begin next month on the major Esmonde Road Interchange upgrade.

North Shore City's Mayor and councillors are celebrating today's announcement of the funding approval by the Government's transport funding agency, Transfund, saying the confirmation now assures fast progress on the two year Transit project.

North Shore City Council will fund and carry out complementary local road improvements aligned with the interchange upgrade.

The upgrade should be fully completed by 2006.

"This is a major interchange with State Highway 1 and the upgrade will greatly assist with improving the efficiency of our city's entire roading network. It will help with relieving one of the Auckland region's most notorious peak hour bottlenecks and a major feeder route to the northern motorway. Local drivers should be celebrating this news too," says North Shore City's Mayor, George Wood.

Chairperson of the council's works and environment committee, Joel Cayford, says there are currently missing links in the interchange which add to the city's transport congestion woes and make it harder to manage local traffic flows efficiently.

He says the upgrade will connect with cycling and walking networks and complete missing links of the interchange including

* A new east to west cross-city movement removing the need for vehicles to travel via the Onewa or Northcote Road interchanges. * A new northbound access to the Northern Motorway from east to west. * A new southbound exit from the east. * An additional northbound lane between Esmonde on-ramp and Northcote off-ramp.

"This will really improve the traffic linkages between the east and west of our city and access to the motorway in this pinch point. It will provide an alternative to the busy Northcote Road interchange. The interchange upgrade is also closely connected to our planned Busway project and will enable local buses to directly access the Busway corridor," he says.

"There are over 130,000 vehicles passing through this motorway interchange every day and the upgrade is long overdue. It's great news that the construction work is now starting and people will see bulldozers on site with action on the ground next month," says Councillor Cayford.

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