A completed study of New Zealand's state highway network shows a Bay of Plenty arterial road is one of seven nationally that carries a disproportionate amount of traffic.

Rated as a road of national strategic significance, the Tauranga Eastern Corridor – State Highway 2, which runs from Tauranga to Te Puke, is this route.

This is a plan of the Tauranga Eastern Link project which is an upgrade to the Tauranga Eastern Corridor highway stretch.

Transport Minister Steven Joyce says the other six highways in this category are: Puhoi to Wellsford on SH1, the Auckland Western Ring Road SH20/16/18, Auckland Victoria Park SH1, Waikato Expressway SH1, Wellington Northern Corridor SH1 and Christchurch motorway projects.

Steven says these highways are just 714km of road, making up one per cent of the state highway network, but carry 35 per cent of total vehicle kilometres on state highways, and 17 per cent of total kilometres travelled on the whole roading network.

Steven says classifying these roads as of national strategic importance will assist in forward planning.

'The seven roads of national significance are designed to tackle the biggest issues on these high volume highways for the benefit of the whole country,” says Steven.

The next step is to draft service and access levels for each category of the network – this will consider things like congestion levels, journey times, whether to expect driveways opening onto the highway, the need for passing opportunities and the type of safety improvements needed.

Public engagement on draft service levels will take place later this year as part of the NZ Transport Agency's development of the state highway network strategy.

'The state highway classification project won't directly impact funding or planning but it is another important tool to help us all strategically develop the network over time.”