'When traffic slows down here, New Zealand slows down': $1.773b for Waikato Expressway
Sunday, 31 May 2026
Congestion on one of NZ’s most important roads is costing the country, says the Government in the wake of confirming $1.773 billion for a Waikato Expressway extension.
Dubbed a Road of National Significance, the Cambridge to Piarere extension will see the four-lane highway extended by 16km and include a new interchange at Karāpiro Road.
“When traffic slows down here, New Zealand slows down,” Finance Minister Nicola Willis told reporters on Sunday, at one of the sites acquired for the expressway.
“When freight gets stuck here, New Zealand pays the price and unfortunately, due to the condition of this road, it does slow down a lot.”
On average, there was a major incident every 10 days on the road causing disruption, she said, and multiple incidents, some fatal, had occurred on the stretch of road.
Willis was joined by local MPs Tim Van de Molen and Louise Upston, and Transport Minister Chris Bishop, and spoke against a backdrop of long weekend traffic.
She described the route as “one of the busiest, most important roads in New Zealand”.
“Every day, thousands of people and thousands of tonnes of freight travel this roading corridor. It is the route connecting Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, and the rest of the North Island and it is in a very fast-growing part of the country.”
“This is a project that has been championed by families, businesses, and freight operators of this region and beyond.”
It’s expected to take five to six years to finish the extension.
Both Van de Molen and Upston, whom Willis described as two of the project’s “strongest advocates”, said their local constituents were excited to see the expressway extension get underway.
“Whether it's residents, whether it's businesses, whether it's those who are looking to develop businesses in the Hautapu area, they just can't wait to see spades in the ground,” Upston said.
“Safety aspects are a key part of it for many families…too many residents of the Waikato have had terrible experiences on this road, and we've heard some of those stats already, so this will be a huge.”
Minister for Transport Chris Bishop said the announcement was a “fantastic day for Waikato”.
“What’s happened in the last few days is the government’s come to the party, so to speak, with significant capital injection of funding, so the project is now funded.”
With large stretches of the nearby expressway facing months of asphalt work after a little over a decade, Bishop was asked what would be done to ensure the extension did not face the same maintenance issues.
He said his expectation was “that we do things once and do them properly, and that will certainly be the expectation for the building of this road”.
The Cambridge-Tamahere section of the expressway which is currently undergoing work was officially opened in December 2015, making it just over 10 years old.
“Roads do need ongoing maintenance work and a significant amount of the National Land Transport Fund is on maintenance and the ongoing operations of the roads,” Bishop said.
The Government had invested more funds into maintenance over the past three years “because one of the stories of New Zealand infrastructure is that we build new things and don't look after them so well”.
Bishop said the road would be considered for tolling under government policy, as all new roads are.
NZTA would provide a recommendation before Cabinet considered a decision and it went for public consultation.
Construction on the extension is expected to begin late this year or early in 2027, with consents issued under fast-track legislation in September 2025 and early works already underway. The project is expected to take between five to six years to complete.