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Transit NZ and Rodney District Council are preparing to award a final-design contract for a $20 million suite of improvements to ease bottlenecks along State Highway 1 through Warkworth.
These will be undertaken jointly by Transit and the council to keep traffic moving through the booming lower Northland town until 2021.
Transit northern regional manager Peter Spies said yesterday that traffic modelling had confirmed the project, which is to be undertaken in several stages between next year and 2015, as a cost-effective solution to the district's growth challenges.
Transit says the improvements will not preclude a need for a bypass beyond 2021, but it is making nopromises.
The improvements will include five new sets of traffic lights and upgrades of two existing sets, which Mr Spies said would be co-ordinated to allow traffic to flow smoothly along SH1 and to and from the fast-growing coastal settlements of Snells Beach and Matakana, rather than being delayed at the notorious Hill St intersection.
Two of the new sets of lights will be installed east of Hill St, at the intersection of Matakana and Sandspit Rds, and to control traffic movements in and out of central Warkworth through Elizabeth St.
Traffic heading for Snells Beach along Sandspit Rdnow has to give way to vehicles arriving from Matakana and often tails back along SH1 in the evening rush hour.
It also risks collisions with traffic dashing across Matakana Rd towards Elizabeth St, from a free turn offSH1's southbound carriageway, asdo vehicles turning right fromdowntown Warkworth.
Traffic turning left from the north will be controlled by lights at the head of a new slip road designed to remove any queues from SH1.
A $1.2 million final-design contract is due to be awarded by next month, before a community meeting is called to discuss changes likely to include a ban on traffic joining SH1 from Hill St by 2012-15, to ease pressure on the intersection.
Right-turns into Hill St from the north are likely to be prohibited from late next year, although Transit says there are surprisingly few traffic movements in that direction, and drivers dropping children at Warkworth Primary School will be able to get there via Hudson Rd.
Transit's share of the project is expected to cost around $14 million, leaving the council to contribute $6 million for easing traffic movements between local roads and the highway.
That is not counting the cost of a new western "collector" road which the council has agreed to build for another $20 million or so within 10 years, to keep local traffic off the highway by providing a new north-south connection across the Mahurangi River.
Although the council hopes Land Transport NZ will provide half its contribution for the intersection improvements, it expects to have to meet the cost of the new local road from development contributions.
The route will past through the new $55 million Stockyard Falls retail and $40 million Summerset Falls retirement village developments, which were held up for three years by opposition from Transit pending an agreement to widen and add traffic lights to the intersection of Woodcocks Rd and SH1.
Earthworks have finally begun on the retail development, in which Perrendale Holdings director Neil Barr said shops would start opening by the end of next year.
Perrendale has agreed to provide land for the new road to be built between its 9ha retail site and the retirement village, but the Rodney council wants contributions from other developers as well. Transit project manager Chris Gasson said the Woodcocks Rd and Matakana-Sandspit intersection improvements needed to be completed by the time Perrendale opened its first shops.
Other work around the Hill St intersection, including the creation of two right-turning and two through lanes from the south, would be completed by mid-2009.
