EastLink Resurfacing Works

Why was resurfacing needed?

In September 2021, EastLink reached ONE BILLION vehicle trips since EastLink opened in 2008.

Among the one billion EastLink trips there were 70 million trips by heavy commercial vehicles and a further 115 million trips by light commercial vehicles.

The impact of all this traffic on the road surface meant that it became time to resurface the whole of EastLink (except inside the tunnels, where the road surface is a harder wearing ‘dense grade asphalt’).

Resurfacing provides motorists with the following benefits:

• A safer ride

• A smoother ride

• A quieter ride.

Resurfacing works were completed in March 2024 

Resurfacing works were undertaken in the summers of 2022, 2023 and 2024, and were completed at 2:30am on Thursday 7 March 2024.

Resurfacing works were done at night

Resurfacing works were done at night, to minimise inconvenience to motorists.

This meant that resurfacing could only be done in summertime, as night time temperatures are too low for asphalting works at other times of the year.

How resurfacing was done

Resurfacing was done one road section at a time, with the road section being worked on temporarily closed overnight to allow the works to be conducted safely and efficiently.

The top 30mm of the existing road surface was milled off, then replaced with a new open-grade asphalt surface. New line markings were applied to the new road surface.

Each road section was worked on over a number of nights, with the number of nights needed depending on factors such as the length of the road section and the number of running lanes and emergency lanes in the section. Approximately 700 tonnes of asphalt was laid each night.

This meant that during the day, a road section might have a temporary running surface with minimal line markings and with a reduced speed limit in place prior to that section being completed.

Rain as well as cold weather can affect resurfacing works

Resurfacing works are very dependent on weather.

When it was too wet or too cold on a work night, the works planned for that night were postponed for another night.

100,000 tonnes of asphalt was removed and recycled

In total over the course of this project, 100,000 tonnes of asphalt was ground off and removed from EastLink.

100% of the removed asphalt was immediately returned to the asphalt producer for recycling and re-use in other road construction projects.

Motorists were kept informed

We provided regular progress updates about EastLink resurfacing works via email news bulletins as well as on the EastLink website.

Together with messages on EastLink's digital message signs, this ensured that motorists were kept up to date with information about which section of EastLink was being worked on, and about overnight road closures.