Dunedin-Waitati Highway

Opened on 14 December 1957,[2] it superseded the narrow and winding routes via Port Chalmers and Mount Cargill.

It begins a short distance north-west from where the two main parts of Dunedin's central business district one-way street system combine near The Gardens Corner with a pair of bridges over the Water of Leith.

Apart from occasional overpasses, it does not resemble a motorway, rather a two-to-four-lane undivided limited-access road, although cyclists and pedestrians are allowed on the northern section.

Several parts of the highway were realigned or widened around 2000, most notably between the Pigeon Flat Overbridge and the start of the Waitati River floodplain.

[5] The motorway originally ended at Waitati with a roundabout, which featured in the New Zealand film Goodbye Pork Pie.

In 2010, the NZ Transport Agency (the successor highway authority to Transit New Zealand) was given consent to realign the road here.

Dunedin–Waitati Hwy looking north from near the Pigeon Flat Overbridge. Blueskin Bay is visible in the background
Map showing Dunedin–Waitati Highway and the Dunedin Southern Motorway (marked in red – other parts of State Highway 1 are marked in white)
Leith Saddle is a strategic point where the motorway traverses a fragile alpine forest dominated by Libocedrus bidwillii (visible on the skyline at right). Proposed road works to straighten a dangerous corner here conflict with conservation values.