Construction has moved into top gear on a vital $28 million piece of Tauranga's slowly evolving masterplan to unclog the city's main roads.
The 900m-long Hewletts Rd flyover is finally moving into centre stage, forcing many motorists to use the official detour along Totara St and Hull Rd.
The unfolding shape of
the flyover at the eastern end between MacDonald St and Maunganui Rd, is a precursor to what will soon be sprouting up along the middle of Hewletts Rd.
Within 12 months, the flyover will provide a rapid transit option to bypass the bottlenecks of Hewletts Rd's roundabouts with Maunganui Rd, and Newton St/MacDonald St.
But in the meantime, the message has gone out from Transit New Zealand for motorists to exercise patience, with the installation of traffic signals at the intersection of Hull Rd and Maunganui Rd designed to encourage people on to the detour.
Road widening from MacDonald St to where the flyover will touch down near Aerodrome Rd has allowed the creation of a central working island down Hewletts Rd for construction of the bridge support columns. Barriers are being installed to mark off the construction zone.
Project director John Hannah said work along the Hewletts Rd construction zone would start with building the foundations for the flyover.
Mr Hannah said traffic management was playing a big role in trying to limit disruption. Motorists should avoid using Hewletts Rd or face long delays.
He recently cautioned there was quite a short gap for Hewletts Rd traffic to merge from the two lanes each way through the Jean Batten Drive airport intersection, back into one lane.
However the merging gap would gradually lengthen as work progressed on four-laning Hewletts Rd down to where the flyover would touch down near Aerodrome Rd.
This flyover was expected to open mid-2006.
Construction of the flyover along Hewletts Rd coincided with work winding down on the road widening and median barrier project along State Highway 29, from Te Maunga to Maungatapu.
