After decades of planning and six years of construction, the 22km Hamilton by-pass officially opened to traffic last night at 10pm, Thursday, July 14, to form a vital link of the the Waikato Expressway – and it is superb, arguably the country’s greatest road, offering farmland scenery, smooth flowing and scenic roads and (some social media commentors would suggest its best point) completely bypassing Hamilton.
We've driven on it, both ways, in our Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV long-termer, and it is a stunning piece of road, and opens up another new part of touring New Zealand, through the farmland of the Waikato. See our video for the northbound journey.
Following on from the ceremonial opening on Tuesday, and the official increase to 110m/h, the 102km stretch of new expressway now extends from the Hampton Downs interchange, to south of Cambridge. Though there is one fail.
It’s not the road itself, which is a fantastic piece of engineering, and huge credit to all those involved, as the infrastructure is simply stunning, especially the bridgework at the southern end.
Sculptures at the north end Resolution drive exit show a wide expanse of views and scenery, past new built-houses, farmland and after all this recent rain, green fields that showcase how beautiful our land is. And to think this is just a few kilometres east of Hamilton city!
The flowing road is devoid of any big hills and has two divided lanes each way, with five interchanges that offer easy access to Te Rapa/The Base shoping centre, Hamilton University, Hamilton Gardens and Hamilton airport, and flow through to the existing Cambridge Motorway. The entire section opens at 110km/h.
There are some small areas of work still to be done at interchanges, and just north and south of the new sections that continue to be restricted speeds while they complete that around Spring time.
“And the Ngāruawāhia section needs work to get to 110 standard so that will remain at 100, or less while works are done, starting soon and finishing next year.”
Oh dear… so much for the claims about supposed construction delays to enable it to open in a blanket 110km/h manner. Late 2019 was when the project was first mooted for completion.
But that isn’t the fail. On the entire 22km section, in fact the entire 102km section of Waikato Expressway, that’s 204km in total, there is not one sign to Keep Left Unless Overtaking, a chronic Kiwi driving habit. Shame NZTA, at least put up some signs every 100km to help move people over. Astonishingly, in our trip both ways this morning sitting on 110km/h, we saw only one fast-lane hog.
The road is so good, both ways, that it could easily be 120-130km/h without a problem, given how good the surface and mild gradient of turns currently is. It is, after all, claimed to be NZ's best road, with its safest design.
Anyway, the great news is the Hamilton by-pass is now open to flowing traffic, circumventing a very arduous and complex run through Hamilton’s west and southern sides. Time savings alone range between 20 minutes to more than an hour, depending on the time of day passing through Hamilton, apart from the new expressway offering a simpler and safer way. Currently, the trip from north to south interchanges takes around 12 minutes, as opposed to the lucky-dip run through Hamilton that took around 20-30 mins on a good day.
As one of the key corridors from Auckland to Wellington and the artery of the North Island, the new expressway bypasses Pokeno, Huntly and extends the four-lane highway from Bombay to Cambridge, with 16 new bridges and five new interchanges.
The previous highway 1 through Hamilton will now be labelled 1c.
