Tai Rāwhiti locals isolated by slips anxious to have reliable northern route out

Source: Radio New Zealand

Tai Rāwhiti locals isolated by January’s slips on the Waioweka Gorge and East Coast highway are anxious to have a reliable northern route out of Gisborne.

Convoys along State Highway 2 were stopped on Thursday night and have been cancelled this weekend, because of the threat of rain causing more slips in the gorge.

On State Highway 35 around East Cape, the storm-damaged road remained closed between Te Araroa and Pōtaka.

The months of disruption and hours-long detour had prompted calls for an alternative northern route out of Gisborne – but it was not something the government was currently considering.

Transport Minister Chris Bishop said the Waioweka Gorge was the main freight route out of Tai Rāwhiti therefore cleaning it up was the priority – until then, discussing the future of the network and other routes would have to wait.

“We need to make a determination as to the state of the network once we can actually see it. Clearly, there are issues on the [east] coast in terms of resilience and sustainability.

“State Highway 35 has been a long-running issue, so has the Waioweka Gorge and all the evidence is that it is going to continue to happen into the future.

“I’m just not going to pre-judge where we might get to until I’ve got information.”

Waioweka Gorge local Bob Redpath said the odd rockfall during heavy rain was nothing new and after weeks of closures felt frustrated by the cancellation of convoys due to forecast bad weather.

“Yes, it’s a bit fragile and tender at the moment, but they just need to be a bit kinder to the traffic, I think – [they] need to get it going.

“There’s a whole lot of people in Gisborne hurting.”

He said the uncertainty around the road’s status had put his farm stay operation on hold and dog trials due to be held Ōpōtiki next month had just been cancelled for the same reason.

Redpath backed the exploration of an alternative route but pinpointing its location was another matter.

“I tongue in cheek, jokingly said to someone recently, ‘If we were in China – China would build a bridge from Ōpōtiki to Matawai.”

Gisborne’s mayor, Rehette Stoltz, said unreliable roading infrastructure was hampering the region’s economic prospects by putting business confidence at risk.

She said with the cancellation of the convoys through the gorge, once again the only option to go north out of Gisborne was to first head south on State Highway 2, almost to Napier, before taking State Highway 5 – a detour which added between two and three hours.

For those north of Gisborne on the cape, the detour was even longer, creating a “huge time cost and huge money cost for our community”.

Stoltz said hard questions about the future of State Highway 2 would be asked once the region was back on its feet and hoped to sit down with the government in the first half of the year.

“Is it worth investing money constantly – and we are talking about nearly every year millions of dollars to build in, not even resilience into that route, but just to keep it available for us – or is it time for us to say we need to think bigger?

“What is the best option to either build resilience into State Highway 2 north? Or alternatively discuss a different route.”

However, she said the feasibility and location of a different route was best left to the roading engineers.

NZTA investigates resilience in current network

A 2020 National Resilence Programme Business Case prepared for the Transport Agency (NZTA) gave the Waioweka Gorge a 5VL rating – the highest level of “extreme risk” for likelihood of damage – and the only road in the country to receive it.

While NZTA had not investigated another northern route out of Tai Rāwhiti, three options for improving the gorge’s resilience were put forward in the SH2 Waioweka Gorge Corridor Resilience Single Stage Business Case.

NZTA regional manager of system design Lisa Faulknor said the options cost between $70 million and $200m as at 2024 and the agency had just completed work to address “weather-related risks” before the recent severe weather.

“The business case is complete and does not need any further work. So it can be utilitised without delay, subject to funding availability.”

However, the recommended option would only half weather-related road closures, she said.

“According to the business case, completing this option would result in a 53 percent reduction in closures – it would not fully eliminate the consequences of weather events or the subsequent closures.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand