Brynderwyns closure ‘not justifiable’
A Northland regional transport leader has slammed New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi’s 10-week closure of State Highway 1 over the beleaguered Brynderwyns, saying it is a fiasco and not justifiable.
Regional Transport Committee chairperson Joe Carr said that in his view, the scale of the resilience work over the Brynderwyns being carried out by the Crown entity was way bigger than needed.
Carr said the committee supported a lower-key option revealed among 530 pages of information released by the Crown entity under the Official Information Act.
This May 2023 option outlined smaller-scale Brynderwyns repairs, proportionate to the risk situation and pending future final SH1 four-laning over the hills from Warkworth to Whangārei, Carr said.
He said the $25 million option would have cost less and closed SH1 over the Brynderwyns for 22 days rather the planned 70 days. It was also proposed for June, which meant less traffic, tourism and economic disruption.
The more modest choice had not been available to the committee before his January Official Information Act request, Carr said.
Transport Agency director for Northland/Auckland regional relationships Steve Mutton said its Brynderwyns repair work was being done to the standard to ensure it did not become another Mangamukas in the Far North, where SH1 has been out for months.
Mutton said the smaller-scale option report was not an transport agency document, nor created at its request. It had been created independently by consulting company WSP and Fulton Hogan. The agency’s board had not considered this option, so it had not been supplied to the committee.
“The [agency] board decided the current Brynderwyn Hills recovery and enabling works plan was necessary to decrease the risk of lengthy unpredictable closures,” Mutton said.
Route reliability was among key reasons for this.
However, Carr said the committee had asked for the Brynderwyns fix project to be peer reviewed before it went ahead. That had not happened.
He said the scale of the current work threatened the likelihood of getting a better SH1 route alternative as part of future
Warkworth to Whangārei four-laning.
Carr said there was inadequate geotechnical justification for the claim the Brynderwyns was at risk of catastrophic failure and therefore needed urgent work, which meant a lengthy closure.
Earlier this year, he sought supporting information for the current works via an Official Information Act request. “The [committee] has been running on an information deficit from NZTA around the Brynderwyns project,” Carr said.
He sought the full geotechnical report the agency’s board had used to justify the work that was currently being undertaken.
In a letter with Carr’s Official Information
Act response, agency chief executive Nicole Rosie said a full geotechnical report had not been done to underpin the Brynderwyns work: “In making the decision for the short to medium-term solution, a full geotechnical report was not completed.”
The cost of the Brynderwyns SH1 project resilience work has climbed to $75 million, up 23% on its previous $64m bill.
Mutton told the committee meeting in Whangārei early this month that a further $15m had been added to the $64m project.
That $64m figure is up on what the Crown entity’s website in February described as a $61m project.