The sweeping bends catch many motorists by surprise. Photo / Sarah Ivey
Transit NZ plans to close a key traffic route north of Hamilton from tonight to Saturday morning to realign a sweeping bend near Taupiri where lives have been lost in road smashes.
A section of State Highway 1B south of the town, where many vehicles turn off SH1
to beat traffic congestion around roadworks on the northern approach to Hamilton, will be closed for the $300,000 task of easing angles through what Transit calls the Taupiri Curves.
The branch highway is used by drivers either as an alternative route to Hamilton or to bypass the city before they rejoin the main flow of southbound traffic at Cambridge.
Those unwilling to resort to SH1 during the realignment operation will be offered detours through back roads.
Transit's Waikato regional manager, Chris Allen, said the aim of closing the road was to minimise disruption to the more than 2000 vehicles which use the route each day.
He said the severe angles of the Taupiri Curves were "out of context" with the general nature of the road. The bend now up for realignment work, which includes removing a hump, is the second to be safeguarded this year after fatal crashes.
Three people died in January after their car was hit by a light truck which crossed the centre line of an even more radical bend closer to Taupiri, which had a 65km/h speed rating before being realigned.
Mr Allen said driver inattention and fatigue were deemed to be the main cause of that crash.
He confirmed that two people were killed in August last year in a two-vehicle collision on the bend now facing realignment.
A sixth death, in December, is believed to have occurred in a collision between a truck and a car on a 200m straight stretch of road between the two bends.
Farmer Rudy Van Dam said there had been no crashes on the first bend since it was realigned.
"The only problem is that the traffic is now careering down to the next corner," where two cars had run into a swamp in the past few days.
