Breakthrough on Victoria Park Tunnel

A breakthrough was achieved on the New Zealand Transport Agency’s Victoria Park Tunnel project in Auckland, New Zealand on 29 November.

A digger scraped away the last of the earthen wall that divided two cut trenches some 12 months after excavation began in November 2009.

Final completion is scheduled for 2012, two years earlier than the initial estimate.

The tunnel has been constructed by cut and cover. The concrete roof will be covered with topsoil upon completion so that the area may be used as a public space. In this way the tunnel has not cost the community a park.

The New Zealand Government has designated the tunnel as one of the seven Roads of National Significance, which is a means of signifying priority projects to the Transport Agency.

The V-Formation consortium, a joint venture of Fletcher, Higgins, Beca and Parsons Brinckerhoff, is handling construction of the NZD-406M (USD-305M) project.

Construction work has seen the usual blockaded roads associated with such ventures but also, more unusually, the transportation of a 125-year-old hotel 40m up the road (see T&TI September p6).