Why are we waiting?

resilient route’’.

Good idea, and it’s encouraging to see the NZ Transport Agency has called for tenders on the work. We’ll likely know by the end of the year what the new road could look like.

Trouble is, this flurry of activity follows years of inexcusable inaction.

Struggling Woodville businesses and ashen-faced drivers who survived a whiteknuckle ride over the Saddle Rd won’t forget the 14-month closure caused by giant slips in 2011/12.

Other recent significant closures disrupted traffic in 1995, 2004 and 2015, so we should know the Tararua-range side of the gorge is dodgy. In fact, roading officials did know this.

Five years ago, they commissioned a report exploring alternatives to the gorge. They cost between $120 million and $1.8 billion. Among the options is a road over the hills near Te Apiti wind farm, building bridges around slip-prone areas of hillside and a gold-plated tunnel design.

Worth exploring, you would think. But it seems nothing was done, save for some much-needed remedial work on the Saddle Rd.

When this year’s first slip came down in April, it was business as usual – close the gorge road, fix the slip site and fast-track some more Saddle Rd upgrades.

Another slip comes down and the status quo remained, until a geotechnical investigation that found parts of the hillside were on the move proved troublesome to this strategy.

Now, suddenly, the transport agency and the transport minister couldn’t just continue with their programme of patch-up jobs and ordering motorists over alternative routes not designed to handle significant volumes of traffic.

So, probably for the first time, we instead see serious discussion about a new road.

Meanwhile, Woodville businesses are bleeding money and motorists are inconvenienced.

By now the minister and officials should be talking specifics, but instead their head-inthe-sand approach persisted for too long. They’ve let us down.