Wynyard Crossing Bridge maintenance

Extensive structural repairs and replacement of mechanical and electrical components was undertaken on the Wynyard Crossing Bridge, following the intermittent technical faults experienced from November 2023 – March 2024.

While the bridge was closed to the public, a free ferry service ran between the New Zealand Maritime Museum and the Viaduct Event Centre to provide fast, convenient access for visitors. To date, the ferry has carried more than 160,000 passengers. The ferry is scheduled to run until mid-January 2025.

For more information on the ferry, please visit this page.

Initially built as a temporary solution for the 2011 Rugby World Cup, the Wynyard Crossing Bridge has, in the past couple of years, increasingly required short-term fixes to continue to operate. Given other strategic priorities on the waterfront, including America's Cup infrastructure and the budget pressure Auckland Council is under, the significant funding required to replace the bridge entirely is not available. Routine, smaller scale maintenance also wouldn't have been enough to address all the issues and would have risked technical faults continuing to disrupt its operation and availability. Therefore, closing the bridge and initiating a comprehensive programme of repairs and replacement of parts was the only option. 

The programme included a full overhaul of old parts, sand-blasting the bridge, remedying its steelwork and applying new anti-rust coating. Following this, extensive commissioning enabled us to test the bridge's operation so that it could be safely and reliably reopened.

The Wynyard Crossing Bridge is an important and highly used connection on Auckland’s busy waterfront, which is why we worked hard to restore it as fast as we could.