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Work on a temporary fix for Auckland’s Harbor Bridge is likely to begin tonight with the aim of opening two additional lanes later this week.
Auckland motorists are warned that significant delays are likely for several weeks until permanent repair of the bridge is established, when all lanes will eventually be reopened and it will return to full capacity.
Yesterday, the city’s rush hour traffic appeared to last all day with motorists stopped, especially around Curran St where the entrance ramp to SH1 was blocked as part of a new bus priority lane introduced that afternoon.
LISTEN LIVE NEWSTALK ZB
7.05 am: Jacinda Ardern on the harbor bridge; 8.05 am: Bic Runga
Some motorists were unaware of the change and sat in line for an hour waiting to get on the freeway before being told it was closed and then getting stuck in traffic.
Traffic slowed down at a slow pace along Jervois Rd, College Hill, Shelley Beach Rd, and Beaumont St with cars stopped along Franklin Rd, frustrated drivers desperate to get home.
Strauss Bessell, a health and safety officer, left a Wellesley St workplace at 3 p.m. bound for Northcote, a journey that typically takes him between 15 and 20 minutes.
Google Maps sent it through the closed Curran St Freeway entrance ramp and it was still on the road at 7:30 pm
He told Focus Live reporter Will Trafford that he had decided to park in the Westhaven parking lot and head to Commercial Bay for dinner, before trying his luck again at 9 p.m.
Another motorist said they tried to get to the top of Shelly Beach Rd to head for Mt Eden.
“After traveling 200 meters in 45 minutes, I turned right to travel back from where I had come – in total 1 hour and 30 minutes!”
The central strut of the bridge was damaged in a freak accident after strong winds of 128 km / h overturned two trucks while crossing the bridge, causing damage on Friday afternoon.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transportation Agency General Manager for Transportation Brett Gliddon said bridge engineers were making great progress with temporary and permanent solutions.
The steel to temporarily repair the damaged prop had already arrived from Taranaki and he expected the installation to take two to three nights.
The strut was in two pieces and bolted halfway. The damaged bottom piece would be removed and replaced with new steel that was currently being manufactured.
Southbound lanes would close between 9:00 p.m. M. And 5:00 a. M. And traffic would be diverted to the western ring route to allow the works to take place.
Once the workaround was in place, they would do “live real tests” with heavy vehicles crossing the bridge before opening an additional lane in each direction to all traffic, including heavy vehicles, near the end of week.
“This is a complex task and has never been done before, so the bridge team must perform extensive tests on the bridge before opening it to traffic.”
The interim solution was also undergoing its third independent peer review before work began.
“We’re not going to open it unless it’s safe to do so and we’re 100 percent, 100 percent sure it’s going to work.”
There was no risk to the structural integrity or overall safety of the harbor bridge and the northbound and southbound clip lanes continued to be safe to use as they had their own supporting structure.
The permanent solution was in the design phase, but installation was still weeks away as it involved replacing the entire strut.
“The challenge with the permanent solution was to readjust the bridge.” The engineers had to make sure that when they installed the new strut it would not affect the rest of the “dynamic” bridge. Gliddon said.
“I can assure you that we are spending a lot of resources on this.”
Meanwhile, the NZTA continued to urge people to work from home for the next few days or use public transportation.
While there had been a good deferral of traffic from the harbor bridge (30% less northbound and 60% southbound) there was still “quite a serious congestion in the city” as more vehicles moved on these state highways and local.
“This will require a change in travel patterns for some time,” Gliddon said.
On Monday morning, motorists reported painful trips in which they crawled from the North Shore into the city with a Torbay resident who said the trip took him two hours and 35 minutes.
At 7:30 a.m. M., The usual 17 minute journey from Silverdale to Auckland CBD took 1 hour and 7 minutes.
A bus priority system has also been introduced that will run on State Highway 1 northbound to the Auckland Harbor Bridge. Its goal is to reduce congestion on buses traveling to the North Shore and provide more reliable trips for customers.
This bus priority system will allow buses to access the northbound SH1 entrance ramp on Fanshawe St using the new priority lane and avoiding queuing traffic. The northbound entrance ramp from Curran Street to SH1 is closed to all traffic to enhance the safety of traffic joining the freeway and bus.
University of Canterbury Professor of Structural Engineering and Materials, Alessandro Palermo, said the cost of maintaining older bridges was higher and required more regular checks and more interventions. Since the port bridge had undergone variations and extensions, general maintenance was more complex, he said.
Palermo said having a single link and relying on one structure was not resilient for the city and questioned whether it was time for Auckland to consider building a new bridge.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the incident had been described as “one in 50 years.” In a matter of seconds, the wind speed nearly doubled, and at the same time, a truck was on the bridge at the same time, causing it to flip, he said.
READ MORE:
• Auckland Harbor Bridge: NZTA Unveils Plan to Fix It After Truck Accidents Destroy Four Lanes
• Traffic congestion on Auckland Harbor Bridge: latest updates, travel times
• Auckland Harbor Bridge Traffic – Latest updates as travelers prepare for mayhem
• Auckland Harbor Bridge traffic: congestion on all routes this morning