Transmission Gully is set to open | WATCH BY DRONE - Property News AU/NZ | propertynoise.co.nz & propertynoise.com.au

PHOTO: Transmission Gully

According to STUFF three final tests need to be completed before the $1.25 billion, 27-kilometre Transmission Gully road out of Wellington opens this week.

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency is refusing to give an exact time and date that the new stretch of State Highway 1 will open but spokesman Andy Knackstedt confirmed there would be a blessing early on Wednesday and the plan was to open the road to the public either that day or early on Thursday.

Knackstedt said by Monday morning there were three remaining safety and quality assurance tests that needed to be completed.

“These remaining tests relate to things such as drains and culverts, ensuring the area is free of debris and construction material, and ensuring other performance requirements are met.”

The road will be $400 million over budget when it opens, more than 100 days after missing its fifth deadline.

The opening will be preceded with a Porirua City Council blessing for link roads from Transmission Gully to Whitby and Waitangirua on Tuesday morning. Ngāti Toa had named the link road from Whitby to Transmission Gully Te Ara Kāpehu, meaning “the direction as indicated by the compass”.

ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF A road sweeper working on Transmission Gully near the Te Ara a Toa bridge earlier in March.

Construction of the motorway officially began in 2014 with an original opening date of 2020.
The highway that will become Transmission Gully was first raised as an idea in 1919.
Tim Pankhurst: ‘The coastal road could have been encased in a tunnel to protect it from stormy weather.’
Given the terrain and scale of the infrastructure involved it was always going to be a long-term project, but the fact it’s opening at all after all these years (dating back to the urban myth the US Marines offered to do it) and all the seemingly endless debate, is an achievement itself.