KEY POINTS:
Motorists can use the Northern Gateway Toll Road out of Auckland for free this weekend but after that will have to fork out.
The road from near Orewa, north of Auckland, to Puhoi opens on Sunday. It will be free until Tuesday when it will cost $2 for cars or $4 for heavy vehicles over 3.5 tonnes.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce said it was an opportunity to try out the road and would minimise disruption as people learned about how to pay the toll.
New Zealand's first fully electronic toll road, it was built to take the pressure off the main access road from Auckland to Northland through Orewa.
Past Orewa the road north is winding and narrow and not designed for the huge traffic volumes it has to cope with.
At peak traffic times it is choked with traffic for kilometres and while the new road will remove much of the traffic from Orewa streets, many regular road users believe it will simply move the bottleneck further north to where the new road merges with State Highway 1 at Puhoi.
Mr Joyce said the Government was determined to extend four laning State Highway One as far north as Wellsford.
"The further extension will go a long way to remedying what has been a very troublesome stretch of highway - easing congestion and enhancing safety," he said.
- NZPA
