The councils' preferred option for a new Waiohiki Bridge over the Tutaekuri River, near the EIT, at Taradale, follows the line of an earlier bridge from pre-1900.
The councils' preferred option for a new Waiohiki Bridge over the Tutaekuri River, near the EIT, at Taradale, follows the line of an earlier bridge from pre-1900.
The Hastings and Napier councils have started a survey to determine the alignment for the Tutaekuri River’s new Waiohiki Bridge.
The fortnight-long survey was launched at a community hui at the weekend, with three options presented.
One option includes rerouting several hundred metres to the west on Springfield Rd, circlingthe Waiohiki village, including a 400m bridge, cutting through an existing orchard and lining up at Waiohiki Rd with Links Rd to the Hawke’s Bay Expressway.
It had an initial project cost estimate of $80 million.
The others are a 235m bridge at the site of the current bridge, and another, the councils’ current preferred option, at a diagonal to the current bridge, from a roundabout nearer the foot of Otatara, with a 210m bridge, matching the alignment to the river of a bridge pre-1900.
Those latter options each have an initial cost estimate of $60m.
One of the three options is a longer route bypassing Waiohiki village, including a roundabout at Springfield Rd, a 400m bridge, and a road through an existing orchard lining up with Links Rd to the Hawke's Bay Expressway.
Three other options have already been excluded.
Waiohiki Community Trust chairman Denis O’Reilly, who has been leading the community response, said the first option seems the “most sensible”, but it is also the most costly.
“It’s longer, but 50-60% more expensive,” he said. “I’d think expense will be a determining factor.”
Most of the cost, understood to be about 87%, would be funded by government sources through NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi.
The two other options being discussed will each have safety-based issues of traffic through the village.
The hui was told the advantages of 2C are that it is the shortest option overall, easiest to construct, with just eight piers, the safest line of sight, and that it is “squared up” to the river.
One option follows much the same line as the existing bridge, which was built in the 1930s and had a section knocked out in the 2023 Cyclone Gabrielle flood.
The new structure will replace the 280m-long Waiohiki/Redclyffe Bridge, which had a section ripped out by the flooded river during Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023.
The route was reinstated six months later with temporary spans in place, said to have a five-year expectancy. It has an eight-tonne weight restriction and a 30km/h speed limit.
Two other bridges across the river at or near the site had also collapsed in the past, in a flood in 1897 and in the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake.
The hui came a month after the Hastings District Council and the Napier City Council announced a commitment to rebuild the Waiohiki bridge and the one-way Brookfields Bridge, downstream near Meeanee.
The survey, including door-knocks, is to be finished on November 17. After design, resource consenting and procurement of land, the councils hope construction can start in November next year.
