Opinion: Travelling between Palmy and Tararua District

The model of the proposed Manawatu-Tararua Highway as presented three years ago.

I’m an ex-Palmy kid. Which means I still have ties to the city where I was born. Family ones, that is. Cue the 80s sitcom.

So, like a lot of people in the Tararua District, I eagerly anticipate the opening of Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatu-Tararua highway. By the way, they’ve just released the latest flyover, and progress is looking pretty good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtgzL-8ZE-s

I go to Palmy on a somewhat infrequent basis. I belong to a social group that meets in Palmerston North once a month for 10 months out of the year. But those meetings are dinner meetings and that means returning home mostly in the dark hours.

I hate driving at night. Because I wear glasses, I have trouble with the headlights reflecting off the lenses and almost blinding me. Both from in front and behind. It’s worse when taking those twisty turns over the ranges. I really hope the new highway will help a little with that.

At the moment, there are two choices. Take the Saddle Road, or take the Pahiatua Track. With my social group, it’s more convenient for the track, but I wish there was a third option. Okay, there will be in (hopefully) less than two years.

Many drivers have complained about the state of the roads and both those routes are no exception. I can’t count how many times I’ve hit a pothole on the Saddle Road and wondered if I’d just broken something. I do get it, though. There are only so many workers available to fix the thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of potholes on roads in the region, let alone anywhere else in the country. And only so many light hours in the day. Plus I’ve been told they need consistent dry weather to be able to carry out permanent repairs.

When it comes to travelling to Palmy, I understand the frustrations people have with the options available. It becomes a pain in the proverbial when either one is closed for resealing and so on. But I also feel that we need to realise just how much work is involved and it’s not okay to vent frustrations out on the workers, or even those who make the decisions. Sometimes there are things they can’t control.

I was reading something on social media the other day where someone asked a worker in an amusement park if they could turn off the rain and the response was for the worker to mime dialling a phone. ‘Hello, God, yeah, it’s me. Hey, could you turn off the rain?’ Reading that, it sounds ridiculous, but there seem to be some who expect miracles. Sadly, those working on the roads can’t perform those miracles.

Here’s hoping the new highway will be everything they say it will be. Two more years. Just two more years. I can’t wait!