Auckland Transport has closed a section of a busy central Auckland road following reports of a rapidly growing sinkhole – metres away from where the harbour’s high watermark was in 1840.<\/p>\n
A Stuff reporter at the scene on College Hill Road said the hole looked to be about 1.6 metres deep, 3.5m long and 2.5m wide, with a hole tunnelling under the road for about 1.5m.<\/p>\n
Just next to the hole is a covered-up hole that was formed during the Auckland Anniversary weekend flooding in January, which locals say has never been repaired.<\/p>\n
While there are cones around the hole, there are no staff or workers onsite.<\/p>\n
Fortis Travel managing director Blair Huston, who works nearby, said the situation was “bloody dangerous”, with busy traffic forced onto one lane for more than five months.<\/p>\n
He said police come out of the nearby police station at high speed, making the intersection even more dangerous.<\/p>\n
“I go past there three or four times a day and since then I have never seen a workman on it ever,” Huston said.<\/p>\n
A police spokesperson said operations were resuming as normal and directed Stuff’s questions to Auckland Transport.<\/p>\n
An Auckland Transport travel alert issued just before 6pm said a section of College Hill was closed between New Street and Scotland Street due to “emergency maintenance works”.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Auckland Transport spokesperson Natalie Polley said College Hill Rd had been closed by police between Scotland Street and Wood Street.<\/p>\n
Contractors were on their way, and there was a detour in place via local roads. Three bus routes have been affected, she said.<\/p>\n
“We can update once the contractors have started work,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Pass with care and expect delays for all traffic, including bus services, through this area until cleared.”<\/p>\n
Auckland Transport responded after a Twitter user shared video and photos of the sinkhole, tagging the council agency to alert them at about 3.30pm on Monday.<\/p>\n
RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Auckland Transport has closed a section of a busy central Auckland road following reports of a rapidly growing sinkhole – metres away from where the harbour’s high watermark was in 1840. A Stuff reporter at the scene on College Hill Road said the hole looked to be about 1.6 metres deep, 3.5m long and 2.5m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6714,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions\/6714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}