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The blooming of the one-time coastal settlement of Papamoa in to a city of 40,000 people by 2050 – the size of Nelson – is one of the main drivers of the Tauranga eastern motorway project. Planning has been underway since mid-2006, and design funding of $8.8 million was approved in March last year. The geotechnical investigations, the key to the design of road embankments and bridge foundations, were completed last October. It will be the biggest roading job in the Bay of Plenty yet, at up to $750 million and 23 kilometres long dwarfing even the Harbour Link project. There are two main parts to the project, and originally they were being considered separately, but were combined into a single item in mid-2007. The first part comprises a 6.2 kilometre four-lane motorway, complete with a median barrier, that upgrades the existing highway from the Domain Road roundabout to the Te Maunga junction. The second is a 15.5 kilometre four-lane motorway called the Tauranga Eastern Arterial, previously known as the Te Puke bypass. It will stretch from Paengaroa to its link with the other part of the project at the Domain Road roundabout. Tauranga’s current congestion problems centre round State Highway 2, the main access to the city and the vigorously growing Port of Tauranga from both the south and the east. It already carries a heavy load of around 17,000 vehicles a day, and has become one of the country’s more notorious crash sites. The road presently goes through Te Puke’s central business district, and the congestion is being compounded by Papamoa’s rapid growth. A business park planned for Rangiuru, near Paengaroa, will absorb some of the commuter traffic from Papamoa, while those heading into Tauranga will be able to use either a park-and-ride facility, or pick up buses from a nearby depot that will take them into the city on dedicated bus-lanes. External traffic floods in from Rotorua and the large eastern Bay of Plenty towns of Whakatane and Kawerau, the product of the tourism, forestry and agricultural industries. Three local authorities are involved: Tauranga City Council, the Western Bay of Plenty District Council and Environment Bay of Plenty. The new motorway will pass over a variety of soil layers, ranging from the sand dunes near Te Maunga and Papamoa East, to inter-layered volcanic and fluvial sedments lying both northwest of Paengaroa and on the ridges between Domain Road and Mangatawa Lane. Peat and thick alluvium cover low-lying areas, and these will have to be compressed and weighted down with fill, according to NZTA’s project manager, Kevin Reid. “Typically embankment construction will take place over a number of years and will involve several stages of filling. Once this is done there will be considerable consolidation of the underlying soils, and the first layers of general fill will end up below the ground level next to them,” Reid says. Resource consent applications have been largely completed, and initial work could begin as soon as funding becomes available. As indicated by Transport Minister Joyce, tolling may be an option to provide some of the funds. Next: The Wellington to Levin corridor
Contractor Vol.33 No.5 June 2009 |