Waka Kotahi and police are expecting a busy period on the roads as Auckland’s boundaries reopened again after 120 days of lockdown.
Police are reporting that the lifting of Auckland’s southern and northern checkpoints at 11.59pm on December 14 “went smoothly with minimal delays to traffic”.
There was a small queue of cars waiting from between 11pm and midnight and police estimate less than 100 cars at each of the main borders in Mercer and Te Hana.
It says traffic appeared to be flowing freely on Wednesday morning however it’s expected to start building as normal for peak hour traffic.
In Northland, the checkpoints have seen minimal traffic through and no issues overnight, police say.
Waka Kotahi operations and maintenance regional manager Jacqui Hori-Hoult says it’s expected the roads will be “very busy” over the coming days as people travel across the country.
With this in mind, Waka Kotahi has decided to pause all planned maintenance and capital works involving full road closures on SH1 in Northland, Auckland and Waikato for a period of five days from Wednesday December 15 to 19.
“In the five days before Christmas last year more than 200,000 vehicles left Auckland. We’re anticipating some of this rush to take place earlier this year, which is why Waka Kotahi wants to mitigate disruptions where possible, but road users are advised that delays will still be inevitable.”
Motorists are normally encouraged to use the Waka Kotahi Holiday Journey tool to help plan the best time to travel. However, with traffic patterns differing from previous years, people are instead urged to follow real time traffic updates via NZTA’s Auckland/Northland and Waikato/BOP Twitter pages or the online traffic and travel tool.
Police/iwi border checkpoints
Police have indicated they will be working with iwi at two border checkpoints in Northland from December 15, with travellers needing to show a vaccination passport or a negative COVID-19 test.
These checkpoints will be located on SH1 at Uretiti and SH12 Maungaturoto.
Transporting NZ chief executive Nick Leggett says his organisation has communicated with transport minister Michael Wood to express the road transport industry’s concerns about freight delays as a result of the checkpoints.
Leggett says Transporting NZ has requested greater clarity on what transport operators would face at the Northland border.
Police and Waka Kotahi are also aware of the additional containers moving from Northport and are taking steps to support efficient movement of this freight.
Speaking on the Northland borders at a media briefing on Tuesday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern commented that they can “only be legally run by the New Zealand Police”.
“The police, ultimately, they are the only ones who can legally operate compliance around these checks and it is totally their operational decision as to how.
“They have expressed a view that they will continue to manage the free flow of traffic, that will be one of the things they undertake. So, they will be determining when and how they choose to check compliance.”
When asked if she could give assurance that not every car heading to Northland would be stopped by police she said:
“That’s certainly the implication from the communications I’ve seen from police. Their goal is to continue to maintain the flow of traffic. So, in the way that you see them operate other compliance checks, I imagine that they’ll be undertaking a similar approach where they will be compliance checking but also essentially ensuring that we don’t have a large hold up of vehicles. Ultimately it is operational though,” Ardern says.
Police have stopped more than 2.1million vehicles since September 6 and in general compliance has been very high with only 0.9% of vehicles turned around because those travelling did not meet the requirements.
Additional to the 2.1million vehicles, since September 17 staff at the checkpoints have also stopped over 140,000 heavy vehicles with 1.8% turned around for non-compliance.
