Weave your way home tonight

Drivers are being urged to use their common sense on the roads as the school holiday period draws to a close. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Aucklanders returning from school holidays tonight will have to weave their way through a maze of road closures across the region.

The New Zealand Transport Agency has scheduled extensive road maintenance on all major motorways running from tonight until July 25.

Although most closures are mainly overnight, some major arteries will close as early as 7.30pm.

This includes northbound lanes one and two of the Harbour Bridge, and the Shelley Beach offramp and southbound lanes will close from 10pm.

"It will have an impact on the traffic, but as a general rule people just need to use their common sense," said John Kelly, road police manager for the Waitemata district.

Other closures include the Gillies St southbound off-ramp, the Central Motorway Junction SH16 southbound and northbound links, and the southbound lanes of the Southeastern Highway.

"We monitor the traffic throughout the day and we aren't expecting massive traffic flows," said Tommy Parker, state highway manager for Auckland and Northland.

"If there are we will delay closure until the traffic subsides. We are confident the closures are appropriate. The traffic flow tonight is expected to be less than in the week."

The main issue for the agency was ensuring that crucial maintenance didn't full behind schedule, he said.

"We have a full-on programme and when we delay work, it starts building up. We carefully programme maintenance so there is not too much going on at the same time."

The diversions were quite localised, he said, mainly going from one ramp to another and not into the local road networks.

All work was expected to end by the Monday morning rush hour.