Motorway jams blamed on new tunnel unfamiliarity

Rush-hour traffic on the opening day of the new Victoria Park tunnel leading to the Northern Motorway. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Nightly traffic jams on Auckland's Southern Motorway are still being blamed on drivers' unfamiliarity with the new Victoria Park tunnel, four days after two of its three lanes were opened.

Traffic was by about 4.30pm today backed up to Otahuhu, at least 13 kilometres south of the 450-metre one-way northbound tunnel. By 6pm the queue had shrunk slightly, with the tail at Mt Wellington.

Queuing to reach the tunnel has frustrated commuters every evening since Monday, when two of the tunnel's three lanes were opened for the first time, replacing the northbound carriageway of the Victoria Park motorway viaduct.

But the Transport Agency says the queues are shortening from the beginning of the week, when they reached back to Highbrook, and traffic has been flowing smoothly over the harbour bridge from the tunnel.

Although the agency has acknowledged peak-time delays of about 40 minutes, some drivers have complained to the Herald of taking more than an hour and a half to get home to North Shore from southern Auckland.

The tunnel is the main feature of the first of the Government's seven "roads of national significance" projects, aimed at improving economic development, but the agency says its full capacity will not be available until March.

That is when motorway widening will be complete along the St Marys Bay waterfront, and the harbour bridge's moveable lane barrier machine will be re-located to the northern end of the tunnel to manage three lanes of traffic emerging from it.

But extra capacity for North Shore commuters travelling to Auckland during the morning peak will be available from early January, when all four lanes of the viaduct will be dedicated to southbound traffic. The third tunnel lane will remain coned off in the meantime.

In a bulletin issued today, the Transport Agency said there were indications that many commuters who normally travelled home on the Northwestern Motorway were queuing to use the tunnel instead.

It expected motoring behaviour to take "a week or so to settle down."