NZTA member out of patience
SH1 prolonged closure at gorge draws ire
Waka Kotahi NewZealand Transport Agency expects repairs to SH1 through the Mangamuka Gorge will not be completed until August next year, 13 months after torrential rain created a series of major slips, and that does not impress local NZTA board member Ken Rintoul.
Rintoul, who lives in kaihau and owns a civil construction company that makes this type of roading repair, described the situation as “pathetic and disgraceful”.
“It’s only 7000 (cubic metres), and it’s pathetic,” he said.
That quantity of material represented about two days’ work for a large earth-moving machine, and the highway should have been closed for “no more than a week max.”
His company, Rintoul Civil, worked on a similar job, stabilising a slip that reduced SH1 traffic over the Brynderwyns to one lane for 10 days in 2000.
“I did a job exactly the same on the Brynderwyns that never got closed. It’s pathetic we’ve got to wait a year for SH1, which is costing about $1 million a day for people having to go round SH10,” he added.
Far North mayor John Carter said the prolonged closure was “a worry,” “a challenge” and “a problem,” although the NZTA was working as hard as it could.
“But on the downside, it’s affecting businesses, not just in Kaitaia but the Far North, particularly those that transport goods to Auckland and logging trucks,” he said.
“That’s also putting pressure on local roads — there are logging trucks on local roads that normally don’t use them — and that’s also causing disruption and traffic safety and damage to the roads.
“We’d love them to pour more resources in, we’d love to get it fixed quicker, but they’re pulling out all the stops to try and get it fixed as quickly as they can.”
Hazely Windelborn, who co-owns Pine Tree Marketing and Harvesting, said the highway closure was hitting his forestry business hard.
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency has reiterated its intention to open SH1 through the Mangamuka Gorge to light vehicles and camper vans before Christmas, with a single lane past two slips on the northern side.
A single lane past the big slip that had kept the highway closed since July would be open in time for Christmas, and would remain open for at least three weeks, senior system manager Wayne Oldfield said.
“Waka Kotahi understands how much opening the road will mean for
He had a crew in nearby Otangaroa Forest, but planned to pull them out because of additional costs that so far amounted to more than $30,000.
He had clocked up an extra
$21,000 on his transport bill, with trucking services charging an extra $6 the local economy and holidaymakers planning a trip to the Far North over Christmas. Local businesses and visitors can now plan ahead with some certainty,” he said, adding that the repair teams had done a great job, working safely and efficiently to achieve the “critical” Christmas deadline.
“They’ve been working double shifts [20 hours a day] to accelerate the work and keep to the tight schedule, and so far, the weather has been favourable,” he said.
“Weset an ambitious target of
a tonne to get loads to Juken’s mill in Kaitaia.
Windelborn also had to pay his workers the extra hour they needed to travel to and from work each day.
“It’s a shambles. We’re pulling our crew out of there. It’s just not drilling enough piles to stabilise support for the road in time for a Christmas opening. The road past the slip is safe for light vehicles and campervans, but trucks and buses will have to wait until we’ve completed the piling and full realignment of the road. This work should be completed by the middle of 2021.”
The road would be closed again around January 11 so the works team could cut into the hillside to realign the road and restore it to two lanes. In that work, they would be looking to open the road when possible.
working,” he said.
“The worst thing is we’ve got other wood to harvest sitting on the north side of the Mangamuka Gorge but we can’t do that work now because the added cost to the farmer makes it unviable to harvest the trees.”