LONGEST--Road Bridge New Zealand's North Island - Superlatives on Waymarking.com

Copied from website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland_Harbour_Bridge The Auckland Harbour Bridge is an eight-lane box truss motorway bridge over the Waitemata Harbour, joining St Marys Bay in Auckland with Northcote in North Shore City, New Zealand. The bridge is part of State Highway 1 and the Auckland Northern Motorway. It is the second-longest road bridge in New Zealand, and the longest in the North Island. The bridge has a length of 1,020 m (3,348 ft), with a main span of 243.8 m, rising 43.27 m above high water allowing ships access to the deepwater wharf at the Chelsea Sugar Refinery west of it. The bridge was originally built with four lanes for traffic. Owing to the rapid expansion of suburbs on the North Shore and increasing traffic levels it was soon necessary to increase the capacity of the bridge - by 1965, the annual use was about 10 million vehicles, three times the original forecast. In 1969, only ten years after opening, two-lane box girder clip-on sections were added to each side, doubling the number of lanes to eight. The sections were manufactured by Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries of Japan, which led to the nickname 'Nippon clip-ons'. Traffic Management: A "tidal flow" system is in place, where the traffic direction of two of the centre lanes is changed in order to provide an additional lane for peak period traffic. During the morning rush five of the eight lanes are allocated to southbound traffic, heading towards Auckland. This situation is reversed in the afternoon, when five lanes are allocated to northbound traffic. At all other times of the day the lanes are split evenly, and peaks also have grown increasingly evenly distributed The bridge has an estimated vehicle capacity of 180,000 per day, and in 2006 had an average volume of 168,754 vehicles per day (up from 122,000 in 1991). For many years lane directions were indicated by overhead signals. In the late 1980s a number of fatal head-on accidents occurred when vehicles crossed lane markings into the path of oncoming traffic. In 1990, a movable concrete safety barrier was put in place to separate traffic heading in opposite directions and eliminate head-on accidents. Two specially designed barrier machines moved the barrier by one lane four times a day, at a speed of 6 km/h. It took 40 minutes to move the entire barrier, which was the first of its kind in the world. In March 2009 both the barrier transfer machines, which lasted four times their original design life of five years, and the original barrier were replaced. The new barrier transfer machines are capable of moving the barrier in half the time the old machines did. The concrete barrier blocks and the metal expansion blocks have been reduced in width by 20 cm, giving more width in the lanes either side of the barrier. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<..>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Copied from website (the media release from NZ Transportation Division) http://www.nzta.govt.nz/newsroom/info/282/index.html "Auckland Harbour Bridge 50th birthday fact sheet • The Auckland Harbour Bridge was opened on 30 May, 1959 • In 1959, 11,205 vehicles crossed the bridge daily • Cars and taxis were tolled 25c [about $4.70 in today’s money], motorcycles 15c, buses 50c and 40c for commercial vehicles. Tolls were removed in 1984 • It was built at a cost of £7,516,000, $24 million in today’s terms • A team of 1000 took four years to build the bridge • Constructed of structural steel and reinforced concrete, the bridge spans 1.2 kilometres across the Waitemata Harbour • The clip-ons were added from 1966 – 1969, doubling the number of lanes from four to eight to increase capacity and ease congestion at a cost of $7.4 million • The bridge reaches 64 metres above the water at its highest point, the top of the arch • The daily average number of cars crossing the bridge is presently around 154,000, with more than 200,000 vehicle crossings some days • The moveable lane barrier system, that includes a barrier and two machines, was first installed in 1990 to prevent head-on collisions and manage traffic flows in ‘tidal’ morning and evening peak system. A new system was installed in February of this year with two new machines that work twice as fast as the old taking around 20 minutes to change lane configurations • A two-and-a-half year-long project to strengthen the bridge’s box girders (clip-ons) started in August 2008 • There are actually three bridges within the Auckland Harbour Bridge. The section in the middle with the steep arches and flags on top is the original four-lane ‘truss’ bridge"

Type of documentation of superlative status: Documentation provided from Wikipedia Location of coordinates: Middle of the bridge Web Site: [Web Link]

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