Northwestern Cycleway

The Northwestern Cycleway (sometimes also referred to as the North West or Northwestern Cycle Route) is a 12 km mostly off-road cycle route connecting the Auckland CBD in Auckland City with Henderson, Waitakere City in New Zealand. For most of its length, it runs alongside the Northwestern Motorway (State Highway 16).

The cycleway is used (as of March 2013) by approximately 800 users daily at the St Lukes Road intersection, approximately 750 daily at the Great North Road intersection, and approximately 650 daily at the Te Atatu intersection (some but not all users would have been counted at all three locations). For the St Lukes Road intersection, this represents a 70% growth since regular counts started in 2007.

The original path was built by Waitakere City Council and Auckland City Council on land leased from Transit New Zealand. It originally only connected from Te Atatu to Waterview, before being extended in the early 2000s a further 5 km east towards the city, with a new overbridge over Great North Road, completed in 2004, connecting these two original sections.

In November 2009, the NZ Transport Agency started construction on a missing section in the Kingsland area, where cyclists to this point were forced to detour through a hilly residential area. The project was to cost $3m for approximately 1.2 km length, including several new planned side accesses (five side accesses were eventually constructed). Costs are relatively high due to the need to work around underground services, and to bridge Mountain View Road where it crosses under the motorway. After completion of the path itself, fences and noise walls will be replaced, and landscaping replanted.

The new path section was opened in April 2010, costing $3.7 (though much of this cost was in fact for new motorway noise walls for local residents) and was very well received by cyclists and the local cycle advocacy groups Cycle Action Auckland.

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Wikipedia