KEY POINTS:
Resurfacing work on Auckland's Northern Motorway is running almost a day ahead of schedule, giving Transit NZ greater confidence of an unimpeded run home for holiday-weekend traffic on Sunday.
Transit regional operations manager Joseph Flanagan said yesterday that work on the motorway's two-lane southbound carriageway between Silverdale and Oteha Valley Rd was expected to be completed tomorrow afternoon - well ahead of a deadline of noon on Sunday.
Contractors would stand down between then and Sunday night, before starting work on a 5km section of the northbound carriageway which would be restricted to one traffic lane throughout next week.
Road police had been nervous about Transit's ability to clear the southbound lanes by Sunday afternoon, fearing worse jams than usual on a route on which bumper-to-bumper traffic is common on the last day of holiday weekends.
But Mr Flanagan said contractors had been able to make the most of a run of good weather for the first stage of the $5 million-plus project, aimed at removing cracks before winter rains cause failures including potholes.
In contrast to Monday, traffic although steady, was less along the single available southbound lane yesterday morning after enough commuters responded to pleas to take pressure off the motorway by using East Coast Rd and State Highway 17 through Albany.
Mr Flanagan expected more challenges in the afternoon traffic peak on Monday, when commuters would be confronted for the first time by restrictions on their northbound travel.
However, he feared it would be more difficult to persuade northbound drivers to use the alternative routes, given that they would have to leave the motorway at Oteha Valley Rd to do so.
It had been relatively easy to get the message across this week to southbound drivers at the Silverdale interchange, where most of them joined the motorway.
Mr Flanagan acknowledged that the road was being re-surfaced two or three years earlier than intended, because of an "abnormal" type of failure caused by too much water seeping into its foundations.
Extra pipes were being laid to allow water to run off the sides of the motorway, he said.
