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.
and the road lacks any indication of its former status other than "No Cycling/No Pedestrians" signs at Pine Hill and Waitati Valley.
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.