Year-long wait to fix a highway

Did you know roads in the North and South islands are different colours because of where the rocks are sourced?

According to Waka Kotahi the main ingredient in chipseal comes from rivers in the south, and quarries in the north.

In the south they’re more grey, because of quartz in the water. Chipseal in the north uses more volcanic materials, so it’s darker. The rocks must be strong, dense and not slippery when it gets wet, because, well, you know.

I can’t be the only one realising I knew nothing about how our roads are constructed, after being consistently confronted with what lies beneath as main highways crumbled under torrential rain this summer.

Seeing those first images of a collapsed SH25A in the Coromandel; coming up close with gaping crevices on SH2 out of Wairoa while reporting on Cyclone Gabrielle; and studying the layers underneath the bitumen and chipseal, for the first time I understood the precariousness of our rural and coastal communities.

It wasn’t long ago that the Coromandel’s main travel issue was how long you’d have to wait at the old one-lane bridge at Kopu over the new year period, and how closely the Range Rover tailgated you around the Hikuais.

Now, the very existence of the roads is up in the air, and with it, the future of these communities.

While the fix of SH25A was being debated, locals were already justifiably nervous about whether the alternate route through Waihi could withstand the increased loads.

Then it went from bad, to worse: SH25 between Whangamata¯ and Opoutere sprung a giant hole.

Locals who talked to journalist Annemarie Quill this week were understandably frustrated with the increased driving time to important towns like Thames, but also the 12-month wait for a fix.

You don’t need to be an engineer to look at the footage to think, that’s a best-casescenario.

Everyone knows these projects aren’t quick.

Business owners will almost certainly be contemplating whether they’ll suffer another summer minus a highway; an unfathomable thought having survived Covid, only to lose a season’s worth of revenue that keeps them alive during winter.

Think, too, of the families that drive over the hill for medical treatment, or whose children school elsewhere. These are life-changing things.

At the outset of summer the peninsula was already grappling with a loss of up to 200 people a day after Fullers cancelled its AucklandCoromandel ferry service.

No wonder communities there are feeling abandoned.

It’s easy to imagine Coromandel as a retirement or holiday destination for wealthy Aucklanders, but the truth is it’s so much more than that.

While the ThamesCoromandel District has just 0.66% of the country’s population, it contributes 1.45% of tourism GDP.

‘‘It’s certainly important,’’ Infometrics chief executive and economist Brad Olsen told me this week. ‘‘The short answer is that no, we can’t just forget about the Coromandel, and nor should we.’’

Although summer is obviously peak timing for domestic visitors, the international season tends to run longer, between October and April.

Figures suggest visitor spend had been increasing prior to Covid, and the local tourism board had strong visions for the future.

And why wouldn’t it? When tourists landed at Auckland International Airport, they were just a two-hour drive from stunning natural beauties like Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach; from iconic watering holes like the Coroglen Tavern, a surfing lesson at Coromandel Surf School, a hot soak at Whitianga’s The Lost Spring and one of the best burgers in the country, at Whangamata¯ ’s Soul Burger.

Now when they land, without a viable highway, the risk is tourists will forego the broken roads, and continue down the Hamilton Expressway or out to the Bay of Plenty, signs for the Coromandel in the rearview mirror.

And then what?

Now, the very existence of the roads is up in the air, and with it, the future of these communities.