Challenge

The Flat Bush area of Auckland is an extremely fast-developing suburb with some older roads needing extensive work to ensure appropriate capacity and safety. Murphys Road is one of those and major culvert widening, road widening and service relocation are necessary to extend this corridor to accommodate the growth. With an existing high-speed narrow carriageway, and an already very developed suburb, space is at a premium and numerous local schools present unique traffic flow challenges.

Solution

The use of one-way detour options strikes the best balance between maintaining traffic flow and access, and ensuring appropriate work space to execute the construction activity. One-way detours are often used when space is constrained (for contraflow type operations) or when disruption would be higher using alternating flow solutions. In this case, the one-way detour methodology works well and was proposed by Parallaxx right from tender development.

Results

The result of this one-way detour solution is reduced overall disruption and over long periods, an accommodated adjustment to local traffic patterns that actually improved overall traffic flow. Maintenance of access and limited disruption on local schools were also importantly achieved.