History
Designed in the 1960s, and with most of its links built in the 1970s, the junction was a major project in a scheme that led to the forcible acquisition and demolition of 15,000 dwellings in the inner suburbs, causing 50,000 people to move away from the area when the central motorway network was constructed - with major negative effects on the nearby Auckland CBD, and especially the Karangahape Road shopping area, which fell into decline for decades. Two Catholic schools St Benedict's College (secondary) and St Benedict's School (primary) were forced to closed down.
The junction was substantially extended (or in a sense, finally completed) in the 2000s, with the final links opened to traffic in December 2006. During the duration of this NZ$208m project, the existing motorways had to be closed several hundred times during nighttime, with traffic rerouted over local roads.
Read more about this topic: Central Motorway Junction
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)