KEY POINTS:
As monster opening-day traffic jams yesterday overwhelmed Auckland's new Northern Gateway toll road, the Government and its Transport Agency appealed for motorists to give it a chance to "settle down".
Thousands of motorists who flocked to try out the $385 million road before electronic tolling begins at midnight tonight faced gridlock along all but the first 400m of its 7.5km route between Orewa and Puhoi.
A Herald car took 64 minutes to cover the route from 11.10am, although just four minutes for the return journey at the speed limit of 100km/h.
Despite radio appeals by the Transport Agency for long-distance motorists to use the standard holiday-weekend alternative route of State Highway 16 through Helensville, the queues on the new road back to Orewa were still just as long at 2.30pm.
Although that meant traffic was lighter than usual for a holiday weekend through Orewa's main beach-front street, and along the coastal highway as far as Wenderholm Regional Park, motorists also faced long queues on Johnstone's Hill before that road merged with the new motorway.
Traffic along the coastal highway, on which the Herald took 17 minutes inching along the final 3.2km, was controlled by ramp signals to give precedence to vehicles emerging from the new motorway's northbound tunnel through the hill.
The crawl along the new road meant motorists got to inspect it in far greater detail than many would have hoped, although the grandeur of the scenery and its elegant engineering structures including three viaducts and tunnels appeared to keep most in good spirits.
A common verdict among sight-seers teeming around Puhoi's hotel and general store after their ordeal was of a well-designed road let down at the northern end by the staged merger of two motorway lanes and the coastal highway into the single-lane "goat-track" to Warkworth and beyond. That is something Transport Minister Steve Joyce says his Government wants to remedy as soon as possible, although it is not yet in a position to say when.
"I understand their annoyance because I think that was a flaw many of us were aware of in the way the road was set up," he said last night.
"Although it is an improvement, the reality is that until the road is four lanes through to Warkworth, there are still going to be problems northbound."
Mr Joyce was applauded during an opening ceremony on the new road on Saturday - for which he was 10 minutes late after becoming stuck in traffic south of its Orewa starting point - for saying the Government was committed to extending a four-lane highway "progressively" as far as Wellsford.
That is 36km north of where the new road finishes just short of Puhoi.
Although the Transport Agency began planning for such an extension during Labour's term in office, he told the Herald that preparations had until now been "in the never-never and we are determined to bring that forward".
Agency northern director Wayne McDonald said no roads were designed to cope with peak events such as yesterday's motorway opening.
"It was a celebratory day, a fiesta day, it wasn't a normal day," he said.
"We don't design any of our roads anywhere in this country for peak events, the country couldn't afford it."
Although queues extended along State Highway 1 late yesterday in the other direction, for southbound traffic back 17km to Warkworth, Mr McDonald noted that the congestion was disappearing as soon as vehicles hit the two Auckland-bound lanes through Johnstone's Hill at the northern end of the new motorway.
The new road will remain toll-free until midnight tonight, to cater for the main flow of home-coming holiday-weekend traffic.
