Businesses and travellers, including Ed Sheeran fans, are impacted by the closure and added costs. Photo / Theo Wargo, AFP
By Robin Martin of RNZ
Ed Sheeran fans, holidaymakers, sports competitors and businesses are being hit in the back pocket and facing lengthy detours as Waka Kotahi shuts down State Highway 3 north of Mt Messenger in Taranaki for five days from 12.01am on Friday morning to replace two end-of-life culverts.
Thousands of motorists wanting to use the only route into and out of Taranaki from the north are instead being asked to head south and use State Highway 4 or State Highway 1.
Solo mother of three Lisa Corrigan bought Ed Sheeran tickets for herself and her eldest daughter Rebecca back in August – long before the road closure was announced in October – and is heading to Saturday’s Auckland show.
She will be travelling from New Plymouth with two younger children and couldn’t face the lengthy detour.
“It’s actually just too long driving for one person to do on their own, so we’ve had to add on an additional two days of accommodation, one on each end to avoid travelling the longer route.”
Corrigan had to find extra money for accommodation, but wasn’t about to disappoint Rebecca and try and offload the tickets.
“It was part of a birthday present for my 12-year-old daughter, so yeah, I wasn’t going to let her down.”
Adele Donghi and husband Ronald were having to take two days extra off work to catch the British pop sensation.
“We’re actually leaving to go as far as Hamilton on Thursday night, because it’s actually midnight Thursday that it closes, and we’re staying in Hamilton for two nights and then driving up to Auckland,” Adele Donghi said.
“And when we come back we’re coming as far as Hamilton on the Sunday, staying a night, and then we have to drive the long way home because the road will still be closed.”
The New Plymouth locals said they were lucky to have family they could stay with in Hamilton.
Donghi wasn’t too critical of NZTA, pointing out their own planning hadn’t been too flash either.
“We had sort of held off getting the tickets and then when we finally got the tickets we thought ‘s***, that’s when the road’s going to be closed’, so we didn’t really pre-think it at all. Yeah, if we’d thought about it we maybe wouldn’t have done it.”
Music fans were not the only ones put out.
Competitors heading home from the National Waka Ama champs at Lake Karāpiro, and those travelling to the Taranaki Men’s Open Fours in New Plymouth – the country’s largest lawn bowls tournament – will also be affected – plus fans of American comedian Matt Rife, who will be performing at Spark Arena.
And spare a thought for businesses reliant on the highway.
Nikola Selby, general manager at New Plymouth-based haulage firm JD Hickman, was having to perform a juggling act with the company’s 65 trucks.
“It’s extremely disruptive; it’s the main arterial route into and out of Taranaki, so what we can effectively do in a day or in a week we cannot do now because we are having to add an extra sort of 250-300 kilometres on our trips, so it has a significant financial implication for the business.”
Selby, however, appreciated the early heads-up given about the road closure.
Meanwhile, Mōkau butcher Bryan Lester was expecting business to dry up.
“At least 80% of my trade would be passing through word-of-mouth travellers who’ve heard about the shop and the products that I sell here. I’ll be opening for just a few hours each day just to help out people who are here, holidaymakers and stuff like that, but there’s no point in opening all day.”
Lester said NZTA should’ve done the work in February.
Waka Kotahi project manager Kendra Ludeke said there was no good time to do a five-day road closure and acknowledged it would be disruptive.
“We needed water levels to be really low because we’re working in waterways, so summer time is the best time for us to do that replacement.
“We stayed well away from the Christmas/New Year period, so that our holiday travellers could enjoy the Taranaki community coming in and out without and disruptions and we also needed to make sure we stayed away from the kids going back to school.”
Ludeke said because of the limited space available and the use of heavy equipment necessary to do the job, a complete road closure was considered the best option.
State Highway 3 was due to reopen to one-lane traffic under stop-go management at 11.59pm on Tuesday.
- RNZ