The one-laners: Regions join call for better bridges

Ivan Serich of the Tairua Residents and Ratepayers Association, local farmer Wendy Kennard and association member Gloria Rennie at the one-lane bridge over the Hikuai River on the Coromandel Peninsula. Photo / Alan Gibson

National's promise to Northland has raised cries of 'us too' from tourist-oriented areas.

Provincial New Zealand wants to shake down the Government for some of the largesse offered to Northland with its byelection promise of new bridges galore.

The pledge to replace 10 of the economically-deprived region's 15 one-lane state highway bridges for up to $69 million is causing headaches for the Transport Agency in its preparation of a national budget for the three years from July.

With 158 one-lane bridges spread through its network, it faces pressure from community leaders of areas from the Coromandel Peninsula to the South Island's West Coast, where increasing numbers of self-drive tourists are heightening safety concerns.

Last year a Korean couple died after crashing off a single-lane bridge into the Wanganui River near Hari Hari on the West Coast - just one of 49 in that region - two days after arriving in New Zealand.

The Government organisation is meanwhile unable to provide a list of bridges which may be candidates for replacement, apart from those in Northland, given that it is still working through priorities for its national land transport programme.

Grey District mayor Tony Kokshoorn says the agency "needs to step up to the mark and realise tourist numbers are going through the roof, so we're getting great income from that".

"Having one-way bridges is not good enough in this day and age - they have to put a plan in place to start replacing them.

"They're dangerous even for locals, not just tourists - sometimes it's like playing Russian roulette, especially with unsuspecting tourists."

His Thames-Coromandel district counterpart, Glenn Leach, is grateful for the Government's two-lane replacement of the rickety old Kopu bridge at the gateway to the resort-rich peninsula for $47 million, early in its first term in office.

But the Coromandel still has 11 one-lane state highway bridges, nine along a loop route through his territory popular with motorcycles and visitors in campervans, and the other two near Whangamata and Whiritoa where firefighters report regular attendances at crashes.

Mr Leach says he doesn't begrudge Northland its new bridges, believing the Government has set a precedent for other visitor-oriented regions such as his.

"It's great to see the Government looking at the safety factor of one-lane bridges," he said.

"And if Northland is going to get them first, let's make sure that as a destination, Coromandel gets them second."

Unfortunately for the Coromandel mayor and his constituents in what has become safe National territory, the Transport Agency says there are no plans to replace any of the district's one-lane bridges "in the next five years", although they remain subject to regular maintenance.

It says the Hikuai Bridge on State Highway 25, where a motorcyclist died in 2011 after rounding a bend and hitting the rear car of stationary traffic waiting to cross it, is being resurfaced.

Another near Whiritoa, where a campervan driven by an overseas tourist crashed into a rubbish truck the same year while coming off it on the wrong side of the road, has just been repiled and had a new deck installed.

Tomorrow's Northland byelection is not the first occasion on which the Government has faced Opposition accusations of "pork barrel politics" by offering regions new bridges.

A $212 million package for regional state highways before last year's general election included commitments to replace one-lane bridges at Kawarau Falls near Queenstown and over the Motu River, on State Highway 2 inland from Gisborne.

The package was announced soon after the Motu Bridge received a $100,000 upgrade, which Gisborne mayor Meng Foon described as a "sticky plaster" ahead of an urgently needed two-lane replacement on the main route between his region and the Bay of Plenty.

But in the eastern Bay of Plenty, on the same highway, Whakatane mayor Tony Bonne is still waiting for the elderly one-lane Pekatahi road-rail bridge - which no longer carries trains - to be replaced.

"That's ludicrous given the amount of produce that comes out from the East Coast - it's a vital link between Gisborne and the ports," he said.

Mr Bonne recalled how a combine harvester became stuck in the middle of the bridge last year, causing traffic jams on each side of the Whakatane River as the Tuhoe tribe was opening new headquarters in Taneatua.

He wondered how many other highway bridges were deemed so fragile that they had special gates at each end to stop traffic crossing them during floods.

Cook Strait freight surge pushes politician to crack whip over SH1 pinch point

Kaikoura's new National MP, Stuart Smith, promises to redouble a battle to replace the one-lane Hurunui Bridge to cope with extra freight across Cook Strait.

Hurunui Mouth Bridge is one of 15 state highway one-lane bridges in Canterbury. Photo / Flickr Creative Commons

Although his predecessor, Colin King, failed to do away with the South Island's only remaining one-lane bridge on State Highway 1, Mr Smith is confident of having the ear of Transport Minister Simon Bridges as both KiwiRail and Strait Shipping prepare to upgrade their fleets with bigger ships.

"Certainly I've had a meeting and discussed it with him," Mr Smith said.

"They are certainly doing their cost-benefit analysis of need."

The MP said two new ferries would double vehicle capacity to the equivalent of a line of traffic stretching 5km along State Highway 1. That would create a flow-on effect well down the east coast, where convoys of trucks and trailers mixed with tourist campervans already took a long time to spread out, only to jam up again when queuing to cross the 140m-long Hurunui Bridge. Visibility on approaches to the bridge was also inadequate, because of sharp turns at each end and trees obscuring views, sometimes resulting in standoffs between opposing drivers finding themselves stuck in the middle.

Asked whether National's promise to Northland of 10 new bridges would put him under extra pressure from his constituents, Mr Smith said: "I've got broad shoulders."

But Hurunui District Mayor Winton Dalley said that although he did not begrudge funding to any councils for essential infrastructure, "when you see it being used in a cynical way, it's a bit hard for any member of the community to accept".

Daily squeal of brakes sends nerves soaring

Coromandel dairy farmer Wendy Kennard dreads hearing squealing brakes when vehicles pull up hard to avoid collisions on the one-lane Hikuai Bridge next to her property south of Tairua.

"We've been here 20 years and every day I hear the screech of brakes and hope it doesn't end with a bang," says Mrs Kennard, who was surprised to find wheel marks in vegetation under the bridge this week from a crash that had previously escaped her attention.

Despite incidents on Coromandel's one-lane bridges, like this one on Tairua Rd, the Transport Agency has no short-term plans to upgrade the bridges. Photo / NZME.

"It was quite a drop," she said after inspecting the bridge with Tairua Pauanui Community Board stalwart Gloria Rennie, who believes poor visibility around a bend leading to it makes it the most dangerous of nine one-lane structures on a highway loop around Coromandel Peninsula.

Says Mrs Rennie: "It needs to be two-laned and it needs to be straightened, because the visibility is not good, especially coming round the corner from Tairua."

Her second priority on a wish-list for replacement is the Grahams Stream bridge in a 70km/h zone just before a popular turn-off to Tairua's Ocean Beach, and after that the Pepe Stream bridge on the southern approach to the town, where the Transport Agency puts wardens on duty at the height of summer to regulate long queues of traffic.

Garage owner Bill Prescott has lost count of how many times he's had to tow vehicles crashed off the Hikuai Bridge, often into a paddock of Mrs Kennard's neighbour, Trevor Jury.

"Usually I'm the first one there, three or four times a year," says Mr Prescott, who recalls two logging trucks from the same firm crashing head-on on the bridge.

Now the old Kopu bridge south of Thames has been replaced with a two-lane gateway to the Coromandel, he says, Hikuai is the first one-way structure encountered by many visitors to the peninsula, and it was "a rude awakening" for them.

Mr Jury said most crashes on the bridge were non-fatal, apart from one in which a motorcyclist struck the rear vehicle in a queue waiting to cross in 2011. But he'd had a narrow escape on it himself while driving his children to school.