New Zealand State Highway network

The New Zealand state highway network is the major national highway network in New Zealand. Nearly 100 roads in the North and South Islands are state highways. All state highways are administered by the NZ Transport Agency.

The highways were originally designated using a two-tier system, national (SH 1 to 8) and provincial, with national highways having a higher standard and funding priorities. Now all are state highways, and the network consists of SH 1 running the length of both islands, SH 2 to 5 and 10 to 58 in the North Island, and SH 6 to 8 and 60 to 99 in the South Island, numbered approximately north to south. State highways are marked by red shield-shaped signs with white numbering (shields for the former provincial highways were blue). Road maps usually number state highways in this fashion.

Of the total state highway network, New Zealand currently has 282.2 km of motorways and expressways with grade-separated access and they carry ten percent of all New Zealand traffic. Currently there are plans to develop another 75 km of motorways and expressways by 2020 The majority of the state highway network is made up of single-carriageway roads with one lane each way and at-grade access.

In the early days all roads were managed by local road boards. Initially they were set up by the Provinces. For example, Auckland Province passed a Highways Act in 1862 allowing their Superintendent to define given areas of settlement as Highways Districts, each with a board of trustees elected by the landowners. Land within the boundaries of highway districts became subject to a rate of not more than 1/- an acre, or of 3d in the £ of its estimated sale value and that was to be equalled by a grant from the Province. By 1913 the government was collecting £21,000 in duty on cars, but spending £40,000 on roads.

The idea of a national network of highways did not emerge until the early twentieth century, when a series of pieces of legislation was passed to allow for the designation of main highways (in 1922, followed by gazetting of roads) and state highways (in 1936). This saw the National Roads Board, an arm of the Ministry of Works, responsible for the state highway network.

From 1989 to 2008, state highways were the responsibility of Transit New Zealand, a Crown entity. In 1996 the funding of the network was removed from the operational functions with the creation of Transfund New Zealand, which then merged with the Land Transport Safety Authority to create Land Transport New Zealand. That was done to ensure that funding of state highways was considered on a similar basis to funding for local roads and regional council subsidised public transport. In August 2008, Transit and Land Transport NZ merged to become the NZ Transport Agency.

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