Work to start on Waikato danger road

Herald graphic

Earthworks will start within weeks on a long-delayed bypass to improve safety on the notorious Maramarua highway - but with a promise of little disruption to summer traffic.

Transit NZ yesterday announced it had awarded a $45.9 million contract for a 7.2km deviation of State Highway 2 to Multiplex Engineering NZ.

Mangatawhiri village will be bypassed between the Mangatawhiri River and the Maramarua golf course to the east. But to keep within its funding allocation from Land Transport NZ, Transit NZ has had to shrink the length of passing lanes on what will otherwise be a two-lane road through a green-field route to the south of the highway's poorly aligned Mangatawhiri section.

Waikato regional manager Chris Allen said last night that the deviation would include an eastbound passing lane for 2km at the end closest to Auckland, and a westbound lane for 1.8km from the golf course.

An earlier design, which prompted a cost blow-out in original tendering a year ago, included 3.5km of overlapping passing lanes in each direction at the golf course end of the road, which would have made it effectively a four-lane highway over that length.

There would have been no eastbound passing lane at the western end of the road, though.

The cost blow-out, which Mr Allen would only say was "in the millions" of dollars, meant construction was unable to start last summer and prompted a renegotiation of the three received tenders.

Despite pruning the passing lanes, he said the two main key features of the project had survived the cut and that long-distance and local drivers would be in for safer trips once the bypass was ready early in 2010.

These were a far better and more direct road alignment, removing the "low-standard vertical and horizontal geometry" of the existing route through the middle of the Mangatawhiri village, and fewer and improved intersections.

These will include westbound off- and on-ramps from a highway bridge over Koheroa Rd, close to the Auckland side of Mangatawhiri, and a T-intersection at the eastern end, where traffic will be able to use an underpass to reach the golf course.

Unlike with the existing highway, there will be no intersection with Homestead Rd, which the new deviation will bridge.

Eastbound drivers wanting to reach the village will be able to turn left at the beginning of the bypass and use the old section of highway.

Local fire chief Don Shanks said he was pleased the project was finally due to begin but disappointed more money was not allocated to retain its earlier specifications.

"The Government has got all this stinking money - I'm disappointed and thought they would have made a better effort."

Mr Shanks, who has spent more than 30 years cutting dead or injured people from car wrecks along the highway, said Transit and the Government had had plenty of time to adjust to rising costs of all road-building projects.

Mr Allen acknowledged that although Transit intended retaining a "future-proofing" land designation for a potential four-lane highway past Mangatawhiri, the agency was giving a higher priority to the Waikato Expressway and State Highway 29 over the Kaimai Range as the preferred traffic route between Auckland and Tauranga.

He said most of the project would be built away from the existing highway, and he expected little traffic disruption - at least over this summer.