Mātiatia’s wharf upgrade still has a way to go, despite the $5 million already spent on it.
On 19 December, Pier 1’s southern berth was reopened after being closed for almost two months due to upgrade works. With the holiday season and warmer days, higher volumes of visitors to the island created long queues and caused delays both at Mātiatia and the CBD terminal.
The Pier 1 construction works were stage two of Auckland Transport’s three-part maintenance upgrade. Commuters are now able to use Pier 1 to board and disembark the ferry, but only the lower gangway has been upgraded.
Auckland Transport senior media specialist Sam Stephenson says that reopening of the upper gangway is planned within the next six to eight weeks.
“To ensure stability of the upgraded Pier 1 gangways, we needed to install two new large piles on the southern berth,” he says.
Stephenson says that to accommodate the width of the piles without changing the position of the berthing face, “we needed to reduce the width of the lower disembarking gangway from circa 2.4m wide to 1.25m”.
“When the upper gangway opens, there will be two gangways available for passengers to disembark the ferry, which will improve unloading times,” he says.
“Once Pier 1 is fully operational, the next stage of this project is to upgrade the Northern berth (Pier 2), and it is expected this work will be completed over the next two years.”
The three-part construction has so far cost $5 million, says Stephenson. This includes removal and demolition of redundant Pier 1 structures, fabrication of new pontoon and gangway structures, site works to install new piles; installation, testing and commissioning of new pontoon and gangway structures and vessel berthing trials. • Silvia Massa
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