KEY POINTS:
Auckland Anniversary Weekend holiday-makers have a good chance of driving home from Northland on a new toll motorway next month.
The Transport Agency's incoming briefing paper to Transport Minister Steven Joyce has nominated January 25 as the opening for the $365 million motorway between Orewa and Puhoi.
Weather permitting, that means the 7.5km direct route through twin tunnels and viaducts will open a day before the main homeward rush from the holiday weekend, a time when queues of traffic traditionally stretch well back from Orewa along the winding Hibiscus Coast Highway.
If the agency manages to open the road by then, a target it acknowledged yesterday as ambitious, holidaymakers will have a choice of three main routes between Auckland and Northland.
These include:
* The existing free route along Hibiscus Coast.
* The new road for a one-way toll of $2 for cars and $4 for trucks.
* State Highway 16 through Helensville.
Transport Agency acting regional manager Tommy Parker said his organisation had "taken the plunge" in choosing an opening date aimed at providing relief for holiday crowds.
"We're actually sweating a bit - we have a reasonable confidence it will be ready by then, but there's still a lot of work to do," he said yesterday.
Mr Parker said fine weather was required to lay the final surface and a rainy January could jeopardise best intentions.
But he expected that even if the weather held up the final fit-out, a ceremonial opening would still take place on Sunday, January 25.
Asked whether opening the road on a busy weekend might lead to long queues at a proposed toll payment station near Johnstone's Hill south of Puhoi, Mr Parker said the agency hoped many motorists would have opened accounts on the internet or through a toll-free phone line by then.
Even if not, they would still have three days to pay their tolls before penalties would start building up.
Tolls, which will be charged for each one-way trip along the road, have already won Government approval, and payment stations will be available both at Titford's Bridge on the northern approach and at the BP Connect service centre to the south for motorists not wanting to open accounts.
Banks of cameras on toll gantries near the Orewa end of the road will photograph both front and rear number plates of vehicles travelling at normal motorway speeds, and send data electronically to the Government's national vehicle registry centre in Palmerston North.
On the web
www.tollroad.govt.nz or freephone 0800 402020
