A new shared walking and cycling bridge beside State Highway 2 and above the Wellington rail line has now been fully assembled.
By Justin Wong of Local Democracy Reporting
Featuring pillars adorned with a distinctive cultural design by artist Len Hetet, the bridge forms part of Te Ara Tupua – a $348 million Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency project delivering new coastal defences to protect the highway and rail corridor from storms and climate change, along with a 4.5km shared path between Ngāuranga and Petone.
Installation began in March 2025, when workers from a consortium of NZTA, mana whenua and construction firms started laying the bridge’s pillars.
By early December, crews had completed the piers, columns and approaches, and over the same month they fitted in the connecting span that stretches across the rail tracks
Jetesh Bhula, the agency’s regional manager for infrastructure delivery, said the project demanded precision engineering.
A 100 tonne crane was used to lift 18 tonne pier caps into gaps between the rail tracks, State Highway 2 and the harbour’s edge. Contractors then had to guide 10 32mm bars into slots just 35mm wide.
Bhula previously said the bridge design was one of the more complex components of the project.
Outside the bridge itself, workers installed the last of the 6800 X-shaped concrete blocks – each weighing 2.6 tonnes and known as Xblocs – that made up the new coastal defences, and removed much of the larger construction equipment by the end of 2025.
Bhula said NZTA would complete the bridge project early in the new year – pouring the rest of the concrete surface of the bridge, laying the pavement surface, fencing, lighting, planting, landscaping, and installing artworks and utilities.
Te Ara Tupua was scheduled for completion by mid year, opening up a fully separated walking and cycling route from Wellington to Eastbourne.
In an emergency, the shared pathway would also provide an alternative access route to the Hutt Valley for essential vehicles if the highway or rail line were compromised.
Meanwhile, the same consortium was also close to finishing Tupua Horo Nuku, a $79m Hutt City Council project to build a 4.4km shared pathway and sea wall around Lower Hutt’s eastern bays between Point Howard and Eastbourne to reduce coastal erosion and the impact of sea surges.
Bhula said 4.2km of the seawall and 3.5km of the shared path were finished and the remaining work was on track for completion in the first half of this year.
Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
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