Midtown wastewater diversion

Purpose of the project

Auckland’s midtown is on the cusp of an exciting future. Similar to the revitalisation of downtown and Karangahape Road, the Auckland Council group are working to get the streets and public spaces in midtown ready for the completion of the City Rail Link, and the thousands more people who will visit midtown each day, and the expected growth in residential and commercial development.

To cater for this growth and to reduce wastewater overflows to our beautiful harbour, our network has been redesigned. To improve wastewater capacity, we are installing pipes beneath Queen Street, Mayoral Drive, Vincent Street, Marmion Street and White Street. This will capture wastewater flows, from the eastern side of the city to connect with the Ōrākei main sewer.

Our work to tunnel under these streets and install new pipes will commence mid-2024 and take around 30 months to complete.

Preliminary works

Before we start our main works on Queen Street, we will commence work to relocate underground pipes and cables (known as services diversions) ahead of tunnelling at the Mayoral Drive/Queen Street intersection and the Wellesley Street/Queen Street intersection.

These works are estimated to start mid-2024 and take approximately 12 weeks to complete. We will provide further details about these works closer to the start date.

Main works

Once we finish our preliminary works, we will immediately commence our main works package on Queen Street.

The main works will be broken into stages as follows:

Queen Street wastewater diversion July 2024 to September 2025

• Construction of three deep shafts, on Queen Street near Mayoral Drive, on Wellesley Street

East between Queen Street and Lorne Street and on Victoria Street between Queen Street and High Street.

• A 1.35m diameter tunnel boring machine will be used to construct the new 600m long wastewater pipe under Queen Street connecting into the shaft locations (as shown on the map below).

• Three short open-cut trenches at the Queen Street/Wellesley Street intersection to connect existing wastewater networks to our new tunnel.

Mayoral Drive wastewater diversion August 2025 to December 2026

Like Queen Street, a tunnel boring machine will be used to drill beneath Mayoral Drive from Vincent Street under Greys Avenue, and into the carpark near Myers Park.

Closer to the start date we will provide more details regarding the construction methodology and traffic management that will be adopted to keep the community safe.

Marmion Street wastewater diversion September 2025 to September 2026

Like the other stages, a tunnel boring machine will be used to drill beneath Mayoral Drive and Queen Street from Marmion Street and then under Marmion Street down to White Street. There will be some short sections of open-cut trenching along White Street and a small section from Marmion Street across to the other side of Queen Street to pick up some other networks and bring these flows into our new network.

Closer to the start date we will provide more details regarding the construction methodology and traffic management that will be adopted to keep the community safe.

Works area

The map shows the areas where the project team will be working.