Auckland Harbour Bridge, NZ - a photo on Flickriver

The Auckland Harbour Bridge is an eight-lane, box truss motorway bridge over the Waitemata Harbour, joining Saint Marys Bay in Auckland City with Northcote in North Shore City, New Zealand. The bridge is part of State Highway 1 and the Auckland Northern Motorway. It is also the second longest road bridge in New Zealand, and the longest road bridge in the North Island.

The bridge has a total length of 1,020 m (3,348 ft), with a main span of 243.8 m, rising 43.27 m above high water allowing access to the deepwater port at the Chelsea Sugar Refinery west of it (nowadays one of the few wharves needing such access west of the bridge).

Nippon clip-ons'

The bridge was originally built with four lanes for traffic. Owing to the rapid expansion of suburbs on the North Shore and increasing traffic levels it was necessary to increase the capacity of the bridge.

In 1969 two-lane box girder clip-on sections were added to each side, doubling the number of lanes from four to eight. The sections were manufactured by Japanese contractors (Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries), which led to the nickname 'Nippon clip-ons'. The selection of the company was considered a bold move at the time, barely 20 years after WWII and with some considerable anti-Japanese sentinemt still existing in the country.

In 2006, it became public that cracks and signs of material fatigue had been found in the clip-on lanes, which have an expected lifetime of 50 years. Auckland City Council Transport Committee requested Transit New Zealand to investigate the future of the clip-on lanes as part of its 10-year plan. Transit noted in this context that the plan already includes some funding for bridge maintenance.

In May 2007, Transit New Zealand proposed a bylaw change to restrict trucks over 4.5 tonnes from using the outside lane on each clip-on. This is to reduce stress on the aging structure. This was later changed to a less strict bylaw introduced in July 2007 restricting only vehicles of 13 tonnes or more, based on the high level of voluntary compliance during the previous months.

In 2007, it was announced that NZ$ 45 million in maintenance work on the clip-on sections was being pulled ahead as part of good practice. However, in October 2007, a 2006 report from Beca Group surfaced in the press, noting that the clip-ons were at risk of catastrophic, immediate failure in certain circumstances (such as a traffic jam trapping a large number of trucks on them). Transit New Zealand has noted that the situation described was extremely unlikely, and measures already implemented would prevent it from occurring. (Wikipedia)

Taken in: New Zealand / Auckland Region / North Shore / Northcote Point (show map)

Taken on: January 24, 2002

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