State Highway 2 Wairoa deviation will mean three-year wait for Waikare highway

A highway deviation costing about $250 million to eliminate the site of a slip that again closed the road between Napier and Wairoa this week is unlikely to be open before 2027.

Nationwide state highways management agency NZTA Waka Kotahi estimates it will take three years to build the State Highway 2 Waikare Gorge Realignment, comprising 3.9km of new highway bypassing halfway-point Putorino and including a 160m-high bridge – one of the highest in New Zealand.

It’s still in the resource consent process with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, although the agency anticipates the final decisions will be made “early in the new year”.

The slip on Sunday morning not far from the Waikare Bailey bridge. Photo / Mahia Restoration Trust

The agency estimates the project would take three years to complete from the date consent is issued and funding has been secured.

The agency regards the highway as a “critical lifeline”. Design work is almost completely funded by the Provincial Growth Fund and the project is endorsed by the NZTA board.

Following consultation, the preferred option for the route was announced in 2021, with its cost estimated at $250 million. The project is managed by the Transport Rebuild East Coast (TREC) alliance, which was established after Cyclone Gabrielle in February this year to strengthen the resilience of the highway network in Hawke’s Bay, Wairoa and Tairāwhiti.

It will work with partners and sub-contractors to complete the work, which Hawke’s Bay Regional councillor and Regional Transport Committee chairman Martin Williams says is the first of the major projects he expects to cost more than $1 billion and employ more than 7000 people over the next few years.

Poring over the draft of the region’s 2024-2027 Regional Transport Plan, scheduled for public consultation also early in the new year, he said the Napier-Wairoa highway would likely see the greatest level of highway works in Hawke’s Bay since multiple projects on SH5 between Napier and Taupō in the 1960s and 1970s.

Major decisions on other projects are yet to be made, but he sees the need for rail to be among the considerations. He isalso excited about new Napier MP Katie Nimon’s suggestions this week for the use of the rail corridor as an alternative to the troubled SH2 Devil’s Elbow route.

The concept has been around for at least a decade, since a Wairoa Business Week presentation in 2013.

Increasingly frustrated by each successive slip and closure, Wairoa Mayor Craig Little is desperate to see the Waikare Deviation completed, but hopes other major projects will be started during the project rather than afterwards.

The Waikare realignment will replace an existing 6km section which includes Putorino (home of the former Waikare Hotel); the Waikare River Bridge - destroyed in Cyclone Gabrielle and replaced by a temporary Bailey Bridge; and the slip just north of the bridge that closed the highway on Sunday and most of Monday, just a week after a closure due to another slip nearer Wairoa.

The road had been closed for three months earlier this year because of the loss of the Waikare Bridge, along with multiple slips and dropouts, in the cyclone.

The NZTA spokesperson said: “While the realignment project is our focus for long-term resilience, reliability and access, we are acutely aware this important stretch of road needs continued short-term work, and we are committed to that.”

The Waikare Deviation will be the biggest highway project on SH2 north of Napier since the opening of the Matahoura Deviation, which also included a new bridge, in 2010.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.