Waterview Connection

The Waterview Connection is a motorway section under construction through west/central Auckland, New Zealand. It is to connect the stub of State Highway 20 in the south from Mt Roskill to join up with another motorway, State Highway 16 in the west at Point Chevalier, and is a part of the Western Ring Route. It was formerly known as the SH20 Avondale extension.

The Waterview link will be 4.5 km long, of which 2.5 km are to be in a mostly bored twin tunnel, with three lanes in each tunnel. By 2026, it is expected to carry 83,000 vehicles a day.

On 21 December 2009 a final alignment and extended tunnel option was announced requiring 205 houses to be bulldozed. From late 2010 onwards, the consent process for the motorway proposal proceeded with a new 9-month fast-track format enabled by changes to the Resource Management Act. Significant upgrades and widening (additional traffic lanes) on State Highway 16 from St Lukes Road to Te Atatu was also rolled into the approvals process for Waterview. While the majority of this widening occurs on the Western Ring Route, the widening is not part of the Waterview Connection, except in a legal/approvals sense.

In mid-2011, the Board of Inquiry granted consent, which could not be appealed except on points of law (and was not appealed by any parties). The decision was generally greeted as positive, as it allows work to proceed on the project, and as the Board directed significant environmental mitigation over and above what the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) had originally proposed for the affected communities.

The New Zealand Transport Agency intends to complete the Waterview works in the 2015/16 financial year. The link will be the last section of SH20, and will complete the Western Ring Route.