Replacing troubled highway

Roger Reeves’ mother used to tell him tales of white-knuckle rides on the gravel road, barely wider than a car, through the Manawatu¯ Gorge as a young woman in the 1920s, and the rockfalls and slips that plagued the route.

‘‘Her father took over a Dannevirke bank branch, so she shuttled back and forth through the gorge – she said every day was an ‘adventure’ on that road.’’

Reeves said a family friend who worked at the Ministry of Works’ Manawatu¯ office in the 1960s often complained about what a pain the gorge road was.

‘‘He’d say: ‘If only someone would give us the money, I’d design an entirely new road’. And nearly 60 years later they’re finally doing something.’’

On Tuesday, Reeves attended the first of six public information sessions the New Zealand Transport Agency is holding about the gorge replacement route, Te Ahu a Turanga, due to open in 2024. He was pleased with the progress being made on the highway linking Manawatu¯ with Hawke’s Bay.

State Highway 3 was closed in April last year by slips and then abandoned in July because the hillside was too unstable. The Government then began planning a replacement route over the Ruahine Range.

Marilyn Bulloch said her main concern was the safety of the new route, and agency staff did an exceptional job answering her questions.

‘‘It seems safer to me. It won’t cut into a cliff, it’s a more geologically stable area and the road’s wider. Maybe, in the end, [the 2017 slips] did us a favour.’’

Bulloch recalled one trip through the gorge, when a waterfall suddenly sprang from the steep roadside bank.

‘‘I couldn’t see anything. The road ahead was completely obscured ... Then there was the rockfalls all the time. It really made me nervous driving through there.’’

Local records trace the gorge’s troubled past of slips, stray rocks, and unwary drivers plunging over the edge right back to its opening in 1872. And Manawatu¯ Standard archives show calls for a new route going back to 1971.

Te Ahu a Turanga project manager Lonnie Dalzell said, despite the route’s rough history, it was a shame to lose it and the closure has had a real effect on peoples lives.

‘‘It was beautiful too. But [the new route] will be as scenic, just in a different way ... It’ll be the first state highway to go through an active wind farm.’’

The new highway link will start at the existing Ashhurst bridge, and wind over the Ruahine Range through the Te A¯ piti wind farm to rejoin SH3 near Woodville.

The public information sessions include three next week at Feilding, Pahı¯atua and Ashhurst.

The first works on the site are expected to start next spring or late in 2019.