New Zealand Road Projects

[Plutonic Panda]

A new 6.2 billion USD plan to improve and expand roads and freeways in NZ.

https://www.worldhighways.com/wh8/news/canterbury-new-zealands-us662-billion-transport-plan

[vdeane]

This looks to me like it's essentially their equivalent of a MPO program update, so probably not as exciting as the headline initially suggests.

Also, we had previously been appropriating this thread for New Zealand news, although one could question whether we should have.

[Chris]

The original Roads of National Significance (RoNS) projects was launched in 2009. This included some of the largest road upgrades in New Zealand in decades:

    SH 1: Puhoi - Wellsford (Auckland Northern Motorway)
    SH 16/SH 18/SH 20: Western Ring Route, Auckland (Waterview Connection)
    SH 1: Victoria Park Tunnel in Auckland
    SH 1: Waikato Expressway
    SH 2: Tauranga Eastern Link
    SH 1: Wellington Northern Corridor (Transmission Gully Motorway, Kapiti Expressway)
    SH 1/SH 73/SH 74: Christchurch Motorways

These are now completed.

The Waikato Expressway in particular was the first longer distance expressways in New Zealand, and the first two link two separate cities not part of the same metro area (Auckland and Hamilton).

The second round of projects announced recently appears to be of a smaller scale.