Covid-19 coronavirus: New traffic figures reveal extent of New Zealand's ghost cities

The coronavirus lockdown turned Auckland's jammed motorways into ghost highways. Photo / Michael Craig

The country's once jam-packed highways are now eerily quiet as the coronavirus lockdown takes its toll.

The volume of light traffic in our major cities reflect that, with the numbers down close to 80 per cent when comparing Friday to the previous week.

There was also a prominent decline in heavy traffic volume, with decreases ranging between 58.2 and 69.7 per cent, the NZ Transport Agency revealed.

Key traffic sites in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton and Dunedin were used to accumulate the data.

• Auckland light traffic fell 79.3 per cent and heavy traffic 65.3 per cent when comparing Friday to the previous week.

• Wellington light traffic fell 79.3 per cent and heavy traffic 69.7 per cent when comparing Friday to the previous week.

• Christchurch light traffic fell 79.7 per cent and heavy traffic 69.6 per cent when comparing Friday to the previous week.

• Hamilton light traffic fell 77.8 per cent and heavy traffic 58.8 per cent when comparing Friday to the previous week.

• Dunedin light traffic fell 78.6 per cent and heavy traffic 68.2 per cent when comparing Friday to the previous week.

Current as of Friday, March 27, the data was provided by the NZTA. It was not representative of traffic volume in each region.

The data was sourced from Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport TMS data and the light and heavy traffic volumes were split using TMS data.

Meanwhile, in general, both Auckland and Hamilton traffic was down 35 per cent when compared to 2019.

Wellington traffic decreased 46.7 per cent, the biggest of all cities. Dunedin followed with a 45.6 per cent decrease and Christchurch was down 40.6 per cent.

On Monday, it was revealed the number of kilometres driven on Auckland's usually busy motorways fell by just under a quarter.

The impact of coronavirus was thought to be the major contributor, with March's average of 12.4 million kilometres falling closer to 9 million last Wednesday.

March and November were typically the busiest months for travelling on Auckland's motorway network, NZTA data revealed.

The start of March saw an increase in kilometres driven when compared to 2019, however, the numbers had decreased significantly since.

"The increases shown in the first week of March are to be expected as year-on-year growth," NZTA spokesman Darryl Walker said last week.

"But the third week of the month shows a significant change, and that's likely to accelerate once Covid-19 Level 4 lockdown takes effect over the weekend and next week."

Today marked the seventh day of lockdown in New Zealand, which was set to continue for another three weeks.

However, while the lockdown was only set in place for four weeks when announced last week, it could continue for longer if it was unsafe to end it.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern marked April 6 as the first day when there could be signs the "chain of Covid-19 transmission" had been broken.

By April 6 in New Zealand, there was expected to be between 4000 and 5000 confirmed cases, based on the infection rate as of March 28.

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