$16m set aside to make twisty Weld Pass safer
A winding stretch of highway south of Blenheim is set for a multimillion-dollar upgrade to make it safer.
The Weld Pass, between Blenheim and Seddon, has sent a dozen people to hospital as a result of serious crashes in 10 years.
One man was killed in 2009 after plunging 100 metres off the edge of the road.
The New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has set aside $16 million for the project, which could see more safety barriers to stop drivers going off the edge, and barriers down the centre lines to stop head-on collisions.
Seddon Volunteer Fire Brigade senior station officer Rebecca Stevens said straightening the notorious 3km stretch of road would make it safer. But she also hoped for more barriers. Stevens had been called to many car crashes on the Weld Pass in her time as a volunteer firefighter.
‘‘There’s one corner we used to go to quite often but they have put a barrier up there now. They used to go down the side and there was a tree and a flax that sort of stopped them going any further,’’ she said.
‘‘Just straightening some of the bends and [having] barriers ... because you are always quite worried when you are driving along there and you look down.
‘‘There’s nowhere to stop when you start going over the edge,’’ she said.
The Weld Pass could also be ‘‘wet and slippery’’ at times, making it more dangerous for drivers, she said.
Farmer Paul Kemp, whose 1600-hectare farm runs alongside the Weld Pass, said he hoped the road would be straightened, to make it safer for tourists.
‘‘If you’re a local, like people travelling to Seddon everyday, it’s just another corner.
‘‘When you take foreigners to the bottom of the hill they go ‘man, what a pass, what a hill’,’’ he said.
‘‘To straighten up what’s there would be fine because a lot of the road is already there, it just needs straightening out.’’
NZTA system manager Frank Porter said they were looking at widening the road to make it safer.
‘‘The improvements we’re looking at include wide road shoulders so drivers have room to recover if they make a mistake, safety barriers along the side and centre of the road to prevent drivers running off the road or having head-on crashes, as well as slow vehicle lanes so there’s room to safely pass slower vehicles on uphill sections,’’ he said.