* Road maintenance projects will lead to a two-month closure of a lengthy section of State Highway One this summer
* The Automobile Association says motorists should expect delays on many other holiday routes too.
* Travellers are urged not to take out their frustrations on roading crews.
Road trippers face lengthy delays on our roading network this summer.
And the Automobile Association (AA) says those delays will be the norm over the next few summers as roading contractors try to get networks “back into a good shape” after it says more than a decade of neglecting “preventative maintenance” work.
There will be major road works right around the country - and the big one will be State Highway One (SH1) through Waikato into the Central North Island.
In a programme dubbed by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) as one of New Zealand’s “largest and most ambitious” road maintenance projects, almost a quarter of the surface of state highway from just south of Cambridge to Waiouru is being resurfaced or rebuilt.
Since September, that has led to a series of full closures of portions of SH1. That will include the full closure of SH1 from Tūrangi to Waiouru, including Desert Rd, for at least two months early next year.
AA road safety spokesman Dylan Thomsen says motorists driving through other parts of the country – whether they are holidaymakers or delivery drivers – should depart on their trips in the knowledge they’re also more than likely to face delays.
“People need to expect that there is going to be a lot of roadworks and there are going to be a lot of delays,” Thomsen told the New Zealand Herald.
“Unfortunately ... people’s trips are going to take longer than they would like them to. It is going to be short-term pain, for some long-term gain.
“That is probably going to be the case for the next few summers.”
The rolling full closures of sections of SH1 were suspended last week as part of NZTA’s pre-Christmas moratorium period on non-urgent roadworks.
That included the reopening of SH1 in both directions between Tokoroa and Putāruru, work that had forced motorists to take a rural 70km/h winding detour.
The lengthy Tūrangi to Waiouru closure begins on Monday, January 13.
Other delays on the main route running through the middle of the North Island include night closures of SH1 near Tīrau, along with temporary traffic management (TTM) on other parts of the state highway.
Parts of the Waikato Expressway are also set to have lower speed limits around other roading work.
Nationally, roadworks on a smaller scale than the Waikato project – but which will still include travel down to one lane, reduced speed limits and accompanying lines of waiting traffic – will be a common occurrence for motorists around the country.
Thomsen said the myriad of works to be done over summer – the time of the year that provided the best conditions for it to be completed – was needed after more than 10 years of not “doing enough preventative maintenance work on our roads, on busy highways in particular”.
“That is the reason why we have seen a number of these roads have a lot of failures; potholes, the road surface breaking up,” he said.
“We are now looking to get back on track in that regard and do a lot of work to get the roads back into good shape. The downside of that is that it means it is going to take a lot of road works to get that work down, which means short-term pain for long-term pain.
“People are going to need to be patient and need to just be ready to see a lot of road works, to see a lot more stop-goes and for trips to take longer for the next few summers.”
One of the biggest disruptions facing motorists over the summer period is the two-month closure of SH1 between Tūrangi and Waiouru.
That closure – beginning on January 13 – will include the Desert Rd. Roading officials say a detour is estimated to add at least 35-40 minutes to travel times.
NZTA said it delayed the start of the closure by a week to try to “reduce the impact on people’s summer holiday journeys”.
But it couldn’t delay it any further to avoid the peak holiday travel period because the early summer period would provide optimum weather and ground conditions to complete the mammoth work.
For road sealing to be successful, roading crews would need the ground temperature to remain above 13C.
Average ground temperatures recorded at the Desert Rd Weather Station for the first three months of 2024 showed a drop below 13C for up to half the available working days in March.
Data from January and March showed just three days when those temperatures dropped below 13C.
Chipseal required a period of time to become “well embedded” before it was exposed to ground frosts.
Data showed overnight temperatures across Desert Rd started to drop towards 0C in March.
“Of course, every season is different, but we can only plan what is considered typical and clearly in regard to the temperature limits that we need to work with,” NZTA said in its overview of the project.
“Closing the road for this length of time isn’t something we are doing lightly.
“By having complete closures we can complete our work more efficiently and safely.
“We can combine work required, for instance, in this closure we are also replacing the deck of the Mangatoetoe-nui Bridge at the same time as doing the roadworks. We can use more invasive construction methodology, which would not be possible under stop/go traffic management – meaning SH1 will be quickly brought up to a higher standard.”
Thomsen said the full closure of Desert Rd – and sections of SH1 leading up to it – would be the biggest single roading project to impact summer traffic.
But motorists travelling right throughout New Zealand should also expect to be impacted by work sites along state and regional highways, and other popular routes.
That includes SH2 between Napier and Wairoa, SH5 between Napier and Taupō and SH35 on the East Coast where those routes are down to one lane because of ongoing works after the damage caused by Cyclone Gabrielle.
In the South Island, projects include a section of SH6 on the West Coast being closed periodically from January 13, and along a section of SH8 to Lake Tekapo down to one lane, reduced to 30km/h and with traffic light control.
Thomsen said all motorists who hit the road this summer – whether they were heading through the Central North Island or not – should be aware that normal travel times were likely to be exceeded.
“People all over the country in all areas should expect to see a lot of work taking place ... more road works than they are used to seeing,” he said.
“When you are doing your summer road trip or going to visit your family for New Year, if you have a few stretches of road getting serious work done on it, it will still add up to some significant time.”
Thomsen said there was no secret that traffic delays led to frustration, and this summer Kiwi drivers needed to have coping mechanisms to stay patient.
Thomsen said it was concerning there was an “increasing amount of abuse and threats” towards road crew members.
Earlier this month, a road worker on SH35 near Ruatōria was allegedly threatened with a firearm at the Rotokautuku (Waiapu) Bridge site.
Police said the incident left the worker “shaken”, with Transport Rebuild East Coast Alliance project manager Richard Bayley saying the organisation took any threats to staff “very seriously”.
Thomsen added: “That is the other message from the AA; don’t take your frustrations out on the people who are actually out there trying to do the work to end up with a better road for us all to travel on with hopefully less delays and repairs into the future.
“Even when people are experiencing those delays and it can be frustrating, try and keep your cool and don’t take out your frustrations on the poor people who are doing their work and often in really difficult circumstances.”
Orange road cones have increasingly become a political hot potato over the past year.
In July, Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown called for an end to “road cone mania”, saying the extent of their use was “embarrassing” in the region.
And Transport Minister Simeon Brown revealed last month that NZTA had spent $785 million on road cones and TTM over the past three years.
That figure – which the minister said showed the current approach to TTM is “out of control” – excludes funds individual councils spend on roading projects.
Road cones will be a common sight for motorists wherever they may be travelling in the North and South Islands over the coming weeks.
And for much of the time they will be in use for what NZTA describes as “traffication”; marking out a route to guide which part of a road being worked on that motorists can drive on.
NZTA says that after a road is sealed, the surface is then covered in loose stones “to stick and bond onto the newly constructed road underneath”.
The start of that process is initially done by rollers before not fully bonded roads need to be reopened to reduce delays.
“To finish this process when the road opens, we use traffication,” NZTA said.
“This is where traffic patterns are carefully controlled using cones and specialist equipment for the first few days to help with this bedding-in process.
“The road crews place cones in strategic patterns, encouraging vehicles to spread evenly across the road’s width. The cones are moved regularly to ensure every section of the road receives an even amount of traffic, helping the chip embed evenly into the surface.
“If the traffic were left to follow a single line of travel (called channelising) then that lane may embed too far, leading to an uneven surface.”
>> For the latest on expected timings for summer road routes, and live road work updates, visit: https://www.journeys.nzta.govt.nz/journey-planner
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Glen Wright continues to deny the offending and claims the victims conspired against him.