Victoria Park Viaduct & Tunnel and St Marys Bay Widening

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The Victoria Viaduct

The Victoria Viaduct was constructed during the early 1960's to link the Southern Motorway to the Auckland Harbour Bridge (AHB), replacing the link via Nelson Street and Fanshawe Street to the St Mary's Bay section.

Construction began in 1959 and in the early 1961 the viaduct opened with four lanes, the same layout exists today. Most traffic growth was expected to be carried via Fanshawe Street with the growth of the CBD. Today it carries an average of 101,428 vehicles a day*.

History of the Victoria Viaduct & St Mary's Bay Area

When the Auckland Harbour Bridge (AHB) was completed in 1959 a small approach was built to allow traffic to travel between Fanshawe Street and the AHB, through St Mary's Bay. In 1961 the Victoria Viaduct was completed. It was constructed to offer the missing link to the Southern Motorway and onto the Newmarket Viaduct.

In the late 1980's when safety was assessed on the AHB it was proposed to install a moveable barrier system not only on the AHB but continuing around St Mary's Bay along an upgraded 5 lane Victoria Viaduct until Wellington Street. This proposal would have been perfect as it would have matched peak flows and the lane layouts of the Harbour Bridge. Unfortunately the Moveable Barrier System was only installed on the AHB in 1990.

The Victoria Viaduct comes under criticism because of how ugly it looks, the lack of stopping space, its traffic capacity and its safety. Numerous accidents have happened; such as vehicles driving through the barriers and into Victoria Park below and the risk of a single crash causing Auckland's motorway system to turn to chaos.

Why Does it Need to be Upgraded?

Aged: This bridge was completed in 1962 and has not been retrofitted, compared to the AHB. It has issues such as Concrete Cancer (Alkali Aggregate Reaction), does not match earthquake standards, it has poor safety standards like cambers, geometric's, stopping space and barriers. Its pretty ugly too.

Traffic Volume: The Victoria Viaduct handles its present 100,000 vehicles per day quite well, speeds are consistent and to the 80km/h speed limit. During and shortly after peak the Victoria Viaduct can cause congestion due to the two lane bottleneck caused at both ends, especially with the Wellington Street on-ramp & North Western to Northern links.

Future Proof: The Victoria Viaduct cannot be upgraded or widened due to older engineering techniques.

Victoria Park Viaduct & Tunnel Project

$406m including St Mary's Bay | Under Construction | Complete: 2014

When the top options were being chosen for the proposed Victoria Viaduct widening/tunnel four options were selected including widening the existing viaduct, a sunken motorway, full two way tunnel or keeping the viaduct with a northbound tunnel. The partial tunnel option was chosen.

There will be three stages of the construction, where the tunnel will be built, opened to northbound traffic, then all four existing lanes on the Viaduct will open to southbound traffic.

Once open, three northbound lanes will be open through the tunnel which will connect with the St Mary's Bay section where it will become five lanes. The southbound lanes will use all of the existing Victoria Viaduct lanes, equalling four lanes for southbound traffic. These lanes will be split into direction being; the two left lanes will be allocated for Cook Street and Northern to North Western link. The other two far lanes side will be for southbound traffic.

Sound issues, aesthetics and previous problems with the existing viaduct will be addressed and once needed the southbound tunnel will be constructed and the existing Victoria Viaduct will be demolished. One of the reasons why the southbound tunnel will not be built with this project is because of a possible tie-in with the third harbour crossing, and a compromise between benefit to cost ratio. You can have a look at the other options proposed for the upgrade here.

Victoria Viaduct Partial Tunnel Overview

This overview is not to scale and it represents an artists impression of the plans. This does not represent final alignments of the project.
It is intended as a guide. Satellite images from Bing Maps.

Construction Images

Above: Trees have now been removed on the northbound side, you can now see the Harbour Bridge
and Orams Marina billboard from the southern end of the viaduct.

St Mary's Bay Widening and Improvements

The St Mary's Bay section is a small eight lane section between the northern foot of the Victoria Viaduct and Fanshawe Street interchange to the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

The section is a windy, busy, yet surprisingly efficient section with 138,250* vehicles per day[?]. The main reasons for congestion through this section is caused by slow traffic on the Auckland Harbour Bridge and the bottleneck of the Victoria Viaduct. The proposed upgrade will address safety, noise levels and matching the surrounding capacity improvements.

The project will incorporate: A sound wall will be built alongside the western side of the motorway; five traffic lanes in both directions; a southbound bus lane; the Shelly Beach overbridge will be extended to accommodate the new northbound lane; a pedestrian bridge from Jacobs ladder to Westhaven area and increased space at the existing HMNZS Ngapona Site. The project will also incorporate an extension of the Auckland Harbour Bridge Barrier Transfer system.

Above: Artists impression of the pedestrian bridge connecting Jacobs Ladder and the Westhaven area.
This image courtesy of the NZTA.

Images from construction

Above: Start of the northern widening of St Mary's Bay.

Surrounding Interchanges

The Victoria Viaduct fits in nicely around six on and off-ramps in which four of them have been around for almost 40 years. The Fanshawe Street interchange at the Northern foot of the Viaduct is one of the busiest in the country, the Cook Street off-ramp, Wellington Street on-ramp and the recently completed North Western connections (both directions).

During peak and interpeak time the whole area is a major bottleneck with huge groups and pulses of traffic coming from surrounding suburbs and the North Western Motorway, entering the Northern Motorway.

The proposed tunnel and upgraded layout will improve:

- Merging with Wellington Street Interchange and North Western Link traffic by adding a third lane, so traffic does not have to merge.
- Cook Street and North Western off-ramps have two dedicated lanes to exit on. Separating exiting and southbound vehicles.
- Flow onto the Harbour Bridge by matching the changeable lane layouts of the bridge itself. During afternoon peak five lanes will be operational with three originating from the new tunnel and two from Fanshawe Street. When the standard four to four layout is operating on the bridge there will be one lane originating at Fanshawe with a standard three from the tunnel. In morning peak the lane will close closer to the bridge with the standard layout in place.

An interim solution to the North Western and Wellington Street on-ramps is being addressed with Ramp Signalling. For more on the links south of the Victoria Viaduct refer to the CMJ Complete page.

Images

Above: Victoria Viaduct from Victoria Park.