History
A motorway extending south from the Andersons Bay intersection was first proposed from the late 1950s, when Dunedin, like other major centres in New Zealand, was experiencing rapid vehicle growth and a decline in public transport usage.
A report from De Leuw Cather was commissioned by the Dunedin City Council in 1963, which recommended a number of changes primarily to Dunedin's arterial road system. A number of roads around the city were widened to four lanes, and the report recommended that investigation, design, and construction begin of the proposed southern motorway.
During this time period the then Ministry of Works designated a substantial amount of land for future upgrade works along SH1, with a view that by the late 1990s much of it would be rebuilt as motorway, possibly along the lines of a US Interstate, with bypasses of all small towns, grade separation of all intersections, and no private property accesses. Within the Dunedin area, Council planning maps from the 1960s and 1970s show a designation for a "Dunedin to Milton Motorway" which is part of these Ministry of Works designations.
The present constructed motorway generally follows along the route of this early designation. Further evidence of the Ministry of Works intentions can be seen on the "flood-free" section of SH1 near Henley on the Taieri Plains, 35 km south of Dunedin, where the two-lane road has a 2.5-metre shoulder on the northbound side and a standard 0.5-metre shoulder on the southbound. This two-lane road was constructed in the early 1970s as the northbound lanes of a motorway, with the intention that separate southbound lanes would be constructed in the future.
Read more about this topic: Dunedin Southern Motorway
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