Expressway woes: NZTA promises review
NZTA is promising to review its traffic management after thousands of motorists were left in kilometres long Waikato Expressway traffic jams over the weekend as the road builder rushes to finish work on the artery before Easter weekend.
The queues left crawling motorists fuming and nearby businesses feeling the pain as motorists avoided stopping to retain their place in line through resurfacing works at Rangiriri which closed offramps and at least doubled the time for a trip between Hamilton and Auckland.
Waikato Times staffer Wayne Timmo took four hours to reach Auckland from Hamilton's northern suburbs on Sunday afternoon, a journey that would usually take an hour and half.
Entering the queue of traffic at Ohinewai, it took two and a half hours to crawl just over five kilometres. The bulk of this time was spent stationary on the expressway as lanes merged in the lead up to a freshly resealed section of road at Rangiriri.
Timmo had checked NZTA on twitter but there were no fresh announcements of delays beyond a notice on Friday that onramps would be resealed over the next few days.
“I realise roadworks have to get done but just stopping traffic on the country's busiest road without some alternative or communication to motorists seems less than ideal.
“Clearly there were people in the queue with places to be at particular times and things were getting tense. If people didn't have to stay behind the wheel in case the traffic moved there would have been fights. It was hot and people were getting annoyed.’
An Intercity bus trying to push through on the shoulder was intentionally blocked by a motorist who pulled left to thwart them.
“I guess the bus driver had connecting buses to get passengers to and was shouting and waving his arms and jumping out of his seat. The car driver was just blocking him because he could. Humans turn petty quite quickly.
“Since the Waikato Expressway’s been built it seems to have never been roadworks free. It’s constantly had one section down to one lane of reduced speed. Why can't we keep 100kms of relatively new four lane highway open leading into the country’s largest city?”
Timmo said he could see how transport issues could cripple an economy.
“If this road is jammed like this for days on end then it’s thousands of hours of people’s time wasted and businesses disrupted."
New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi’s regional manager for infrastructure delivery Jo Wilton apologised for the “excessive delays”.
“We appreciate the frustration and inconvenience this caused road users and we’re reviewing what contributed to the delays and what can be improved to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
The 4.8km Rangiriri section of the Expressway is down to single lanes in both directions and reduced speed limits for surfacing work.
“We’re in the final throes of a big work push here right now with NZTA committed to completing the final chip sealing on this stretch of SH1, by Easter weather permitting.”
Contractors are laying a final surface which started on March 6 taking 10 days northbound, then 10 days southbound.