Waterview Connection
The Waterview Tunnel is a key piece of the Western Ring Route, a 48km motorway route through the west of Auckland, connecting Manukau, the city, West Auckland and the North Shore.
- Project: Waterview Connection
- Date: 2013 - 2017
- Client: NZTA
- Location: West Auckland
- Main contractor: Well Connected Alliance
- Estimated cost: $1.4bn
The 2.4km Waterview Tunnel between Pt Chevalier and Mt Roskill opened in 2017, and cost $1.4b to build.
- Tunnelling first began at Waterview in 2013. The first tunnel was completed in 2014
- Alice – the Tunnel Boring Machine - excavated enough dirt to fill 320 Olympic-sized swimming pools and installed more than 24,000 concrete segments to line the two tunnels
- Each of Waterview’s two tunnels is 2.4km long – twice the length of the Auckland Harbour Bridge
- The tunnels are the longest road tunnels in New Zealand – the Lyttleton road tunnel at 1.97km previously held the record
- The Tunnel Boring Machine was specifically designed for the Waterview geology by the German company, Herrenkencht, and manufactured in China
- The Tunnel Boring Machine was 87m long
Fitting out the Tunnel involved:
- 74,500m3 of aggregate
- Almost 5kms of drainage pipes
- 104 flame traps.
- 140,000m2 of paint has been applied – black for the roof, white for the walls
- 4,000 lights
- 62 ventilation fans
- 50kms of cable trays to support wiring and other equipment
- 400kms or 270tns of cabling and wiring
- 5 deluge storage tanks each containing 250m3 of water for fire control. Each deluge set will supply 10mm of water per second inside each of the 173 zones of the tunnel. Each zone is located every 30 metres in the tunnels
