Busy road closed as sinkhole begins to devour another Auckland street

A sinkhole has forced the closure of yet another Auckland street.

The eastbound lanes on Princes St in Ōtāhuhu, between Great South Rd and Atkinson Ave, have been closed to traffic after a sinkhole opened up on Tuesday morning.

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The hole is just under half a metre wide and about 30cm deep.

But deep channels run away from the hole’s opening underground – and part of the road nearby can be seen sinking and cracking slightly.

Police are directing traffic away from the hole and Auckland Transport has diverted bus routes away until the hole is fixed.

It’s the second sinkhole to cause traffic headaches in Auckland in just over a week, with a much larger hole on College Hill in Freeman’s Bay closing the street last Monday.

That hole was caused by an old, damaged storm water pipe cracking, leaving water to spill out and erode surrounding soil.

The Freeman’s Bay hole was about 1.6m deep, 2.5m across and 3.5m long.

Last week, an Auckland Council expert said he would not be “surprised” if more sinkholes opened up across Auckland CBD, after a gaping hole opened up near the bottom of College Hill.

“Where the infrastructure’s in a fragile state you’ll start to see these problems cropping up,” said Healthy Waters’ strategy head Andrew Chin last Wednesday.

The remedy so far has been a vast number of cones, and diverting traffic. As for a repair to the College Hill hole, that job is expected to take about four months.

Healthy Waters head of operations Andrew Skelton told RNZ last week that the stormwater pipe would need to be replaced and the soil around it filled back in.

On Thursday, Auckland Council said initial repair work to the stormwater pipe had begun and would continue over the weekend – on track to be completed by early this week.

Out east in Mellons Bay, part of Marine Parade is slowly collapsing down a bank into a roadside reserve.

It was initially repaired after subsistence caused it to collapse during the heavy rains at the start of the year, but just over a month ago the road began to crumble once again.

Warning markers have since been drilled into the road to warn alert drivers to the subsidence, and an AT spokesperson said the fix will take time.

She said the road was being monitored regularly by engineers for further deterioration.

“Unfortunately, any repair here is not a straight forward fix as there is still some significant ground movement within this slip site,” she said.

“It’s been aggravated by the recent weather and six months of heavy rainfall/extreme weather.”