SH1 south of Kaikoura to open before Christmas
It takes the 30-tonne digger about five bucket-loads to fill the truck’s large tray as workers clear debris from the road south of Kaikoura.
A truckload less seems to make no difference to the mass of slip 14, but as soon as one truck is gone, another backs into its place. A few days of this and the slip will be clear.
The relentless work will soon pay off for the people of Kaikoura, who have been without a reliable access road since the November 14 earthquake.
State Highway 1 south of the coastal town is expected to open for service and resident vehicles by the end of this week, or early next week, depending on weather and aftershocks. General vehicle access should be restored before Christmas.
The railway line is a different story, with mangled tracks and debris-blocked tunnels.
New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) regional performance manager Pete Connors said SH1 south of the town would initially be ‘‘single lane under traffic management’’ in places, but a lot of it would be open both ways.
He said the road was already ‘‘pretty good’’ almost to Oaro.
A convoy system, like that on SH70 (the inland road), was not being considered for SH1.
Work would be ongoing and travel time for the Cheviot-to-Kaikoura stretch was expected to be about 30 minutes longer than it had been pre-quake.
Connors said the ‘‘trick’’ of it all was making the roadside slopes ‘‘as safe as possible’’.
‘‘It’s not a matter of shifting the dirt that’s the problem, it’s more the big problem of making the sites safe.’’ Stabilising had taken more time than moving the debris, Connors said.
‘‘When we do open [the road], the last thing we want to do is have it so we haven’t stabilised the slopes and it’s unreliable.’’
Connors said the 14,000-tonne slip 14 was one of the bigger ones of the three or four left to clear on that section of road.
There had been about 29 slips between Cheviot and Kaikoura after the quake. So far about 200,000 tonnes of debris has been moved to clear them.
Connors said that material would be used, where possible, as fill when improving the highway. He said since the seabed had lifted, widening above the high-tide mark was now possible.
More than 100 contractors had been involved in the roadworks. Heavy machinery is being used, as well as helicopters to sluice loose debris from the slips. In areas where sluicing isn’t possible, such as when power lines are above the slips, abseiling teams have been sent in to remove loose rocks.
Downer operations manager Jon Wood said abseilers used ‘‘a mixture of hand, foot and crowbar’’ to dislodge dangerous rocks.
Further north on SH1, where destruction is more substantial, progress was not as apparent.
Sluicing and stabilisation work is expected to start next week on the slips further north on SH1, where destruction is more substantial, Connors said.
Connors also said the weekend’s bad weather would delay opening access to the inland road for vehicles outside of the scheduled convoys.
Connors said the reopening of the southern section of SH1 would take some of the pressure off SH70, which had bigger stability problems.