Traffic gridlock 'completely unacceptable'

Mayor in touch with Minister of Transport

BY MATT RILKOFF

New Plymouth drivers got a bitter taste of big city life yesterday when traffic gridlocked all day from the Waiwhakaiho Bridge bottleneck.

And the problem will be the same today and almost certainly tomorrow as work on strengthening the road near the three-lane bridge continues.

The unsealed metal surface restricts vehicles to 30kmh, which quickly sees traffic banking up along Northgate and Devon St East, sometimes nearly back to the CBD.

Such jams have become an accepted part of morning and evening rushes and holiday periods but not for the whole day and certainly not on a week day.

"Lunacy. Completely unacceptable," New Plymouth Mayor Peter Tennent said yesterday.

"We are working hard to get the message through to the people in Wellington just how critical it is to get this problem fixed."

The problem of New Plymouth's northern exit is one every resident knows about, but that does not help secure New Zealand Transit Agency funding to fix it.

In August it was left off a list of national roading hotspots the Government had allocated $8.7 billion to deal with.

Mr Tennent said he had received numerous complaints about the traffic jams and had been in contact with the Minister of Transport to reiterate just how important the city's northern route was and how quickly it could become snarled.

NZTA regional state highway manager Errol Christiansen yesterday said work on the road would continue through the night in a bid to get it finished.

However it was unlikely the final layer of hot mix would be laid and traffic flowing as normal until Friday at the earliest.

"Once that is done all work is finished in that area and it can all get back to normal," Mr Christiansen said.

In the meantime he thanked motorists for their patience and recommended avoiding the bridge unless absolutely necessary.

On average 33,000 vehicles cross the Waiwhakaiho Bridge each day, or about 120 every five minutes.

Graeme Jepson, owner of Ace Home Services on Devon St East in Strandon said vehicles heading north were backed up to his business from early in the morning until late in the afternoon.

Just before lunch it took him 15 minutes to get from Strandon to Harvey Norman in the Waiwhakaiho Valley – a trip usually completed in five minutes or less.

"It's the same on Northgate. It doesn't matter which way you go. It's a bloody shambles. There is no other way out," he said.

Though much of the blame for the jams rested with the roadworks there were other factors to consider Mr Jepson said.

"Yeah, the road is a bit rough but some of those elderly drivers they creep, they don't bloody move. They just sit in their cars. They don't care. They are in no rush."

A Taranaki Daily News drive from New Plymouth's CBD to Bell Block just after 1pm yesterday took 22 minutes.

It took 13 minutes to drive the stretch of Northgate from Mangorei Rd to the Waiwhakaiho lights, a journey usually lasting just over a minute.

Another attempt at 4.30pm took 15 minutes to reach Bell Block but the return trip took 34 minutes.

This was because roading contractors had reversed the lanes on the bridge so two headed north and one south which itself caused inbound traffic to queue up as far as Airport Rd.

- © Fairfax NZ News