New Motorway!

Highway 20, the South Western Motorway, has just been extended from Puhinui Road to Highway 1 at Manukau City.  Today we were allowed to walk the new route, and then later in the day, ride the route on bicycles.  Tonight at midnight the motorway opens, bt only for traffic heading south down highway 20.  The North bound lanes will take a few more weeks to complete.

Weather forecasts indicated rain, but thankfully they were wrong again.  Everyone enjoyed lovely warm sunshine and the walk past areas not normally seen.

Quite a few new bridges have been built ... there's even one over the railway.  One of the other shots in the post shows the Auckland bound train heading away from Wiri and is taken from the new motorway bridge over the railway.

I can imagine the motorway will ease the congestion in the centre of Manukau City.  However, quite what will happen on Highway 1 when it joins to go south I can't imagine.  It's often busy, slow running or even stationary as people head home and this new feed isn't going to help matters!

Image of the train is a single shot HDR processed in Photomatix Pro.  I used the wide angle (12mm) lens to try and get a reasonable amount of sky ... I really liked the shapes of the clouds and HDR seems to accentuate them.  What do you think?