Frustration at slow SH1 progress
With the promise of more than 200 technical designers working on plans for the northern stretch of SH1, concerns are being raised that the Government’s $2 billion pledge to reinstate the network will not go far enough.
Add to that the cost of the constant sluicing of the major slips, which some fear is already well into the millions of dollars, and business owners in Kaikoura are starting to question the process.
Dave Stanford, who owns two backpacker businesses in Kaikoura, said he was becoming frustrated with the amount of time and money going into the project and is questioning the lack of action, which was crippling for his and others’ businesses.
He attended a meeting for the accommodation sector soon after the earthquake and said some people were now ‘‘very close to the edge’’.
‘‘We were told we are going to end up with far better infrastructure at the end of all this, but that’s going to be little consolation to these people if they have all gone bust,’’ he said.
Stanford said he could not understand why a simple one-lane access route had not already been established that would allow for vehicles access in and out of Kaikoura twice a day.
‘‘It’s not rocket science. They just need to get a big dozer in there, the slips just need to be benched. Locals would have had it open a month ago.’’
Stanford relies on tour buses for his business, and would normally have at least 13 buses full of visitors weekly at this time of year, but instead he has spent his summer on painting and other main- tenance jobs just to keep him and his staff busy, while the tour buses enjoy a bumper season.
He was not covering wages even with the wages subsidy and was just lucky he had been in the business for 25 years, but he felt for newer businesses who were relying on the summer trade to get themselves out of debt.
The newly-established North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery (NCTIR) is heading the project and announced last week that more than 100 technical designers were now based in Christchurch, working on the repair solution for each of the sites. The team was looking at whether the road and rail networks needed to be repaired, rebuilt or realigned to create safe and resilient networks, with the number of designers expected to double.
‘‘It’s getting to the point where it’s beyond a joke,’’ Stanford said.
‘‘Just get the bloody road open and the designers can do their stuff later.’’ Fairfax NZ