In Transit - June 1997 - No. 81 - Annual safety certification of highways, Newlands Interchange and other projects

 The June 1997 issue of In Transit had articles on the following points:

• An annual safety certification of the state highway network is to be produced to identify opportunities to improve the safety of the network. This covers factors like roadside shoulder slopes, road camber, obstructions on the road edge, running a checklist over the entire network, with annual reviews of this status.
• Retirement of John Kearney from the Transit NZ Board. He commented that establishment of Transit NZ improved control and management of the state highway system, as it looked at it from a system not a sectoral point of view. 
• Work commencing on the $16.5m Newlands Interchange project in Wellington on SH1.
• Near completion of a new level crossing at Rolleston with Selwyn District, adjacent to SH1 (a site of four fatalities).
• Vibralines to be installed on the edges of Auckland motorways following successful trials on the Johnsonville-Porirua Motorway near Tawa. This is expected to reduce the 400 accidents a year due to vehicles running off the motorway network, by cutting injury crashes by 15%.
• Transit NZ purchased land as part of a property development north of Tauranga to enable a corridor for the future northern Tauranga arterial project (what is now known as Takitimu North Link).
• Options being investigated for the Te Puke Bypass (what is now the Tauranga Eastern Link) SH2.
• Work to start on the $7m Kaitoke realignment on SH2 Wellington between Upper Hutt and the Remutakas.
• Joint planning study launched with Kapiti Coast District Council for what was to be called the Kapiti Western Link Road project (a local road to connect Raumati, Paraparaumu and Waikanae to relieve SH1). This project was cancelled in favour of the Kapiti Expressway which was started in 2013 and completed in 2017, bypassing Paraparaumu and Waikanae with SH1.