\u201cWhen there are higher temperatures and slow traffic, there is always a risk of bitumen sticking to tyres \u2013 which is also what happened yesterday,\u201d the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
Chunks of the road surface of the $1.25b Transmission Gully peeled off, sticking to car tyres yesterday. Photo \/ Facebook<\/p>\n
The area reached a high of 23.8C yesterday, according to MetService.<\/p>\n
NZTA earlier said resurfacing work must take place over summer as it requires warmer weather.<\/p>\n
The Herald revealed in October that years of work are required<\/a> to rebuild the highway, which has never been completed despite opening in 2022.<\/p>\n A budget of $32m has been allocated for the \u201csummer maintenance season\u201d, but it won\u2019t spell completion of the highway, with NZTA confirming future rebuilding and resurfacing is needed for future summers.<\/p>\n A source familiar with the project told the Herald work could continue for five years, a claim NZTA would not directly address when asked.<\/p>\n \u201cResurfacing and rebuilding work will continue on Transmission Gully as part of future summer maintenance seasons. The specific work programme for future seasons has not been finalised,\u201d a spokesman for the agency said.<\/p>\n The road was built under a Public Private Partnership (PPP), but incomplete works ended up being the subject of legal action in the High Court<\/a> between NZTA and the private road-builders.<\/p>\n The matter was ultimately settled outside court in late 2024, with the ongoing operations and maintenance being brought in-house by the agency.<\/p>\n The $32m rebuild now underway is funded as part of the PPP arrangement and will conclude mid-February.<\/p>\n The road, the construction of which had been debated for more than 100 years, was officially started in 2014.<\/p>\n The build\u2019s setbacks included years of budget blowouts<\/a> and delays due to Covid-19<\/a>, severe weather events and the Kaik\u014dura earthquake.<\/p>\n The works will help bring the highway up to standard for a speed limit increase to 110km\/h, something more than 90% of commuters support<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ethan Manera<\/a> is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen there are higher temperatures and slow traffic, there is always a risk of bitumen sticking to tyres…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[29485,74,11164,29765,8613,120327,30185,26755,78,113136,3945,111,43,139,69,1118,6662,90,17711,112569,7565,66952,1314,14625,182,35924,30184,25444,15900],"class_list":["post-224500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-29485","tag-after","tag-began","tag-beleaguered","tag-billion","tag-chunks","tag-gully","tag-highway","tag-in","tag-melt","tag-motorway","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-off","tag-on","tag-parts","tag-peel","tag-receive","tag-repairs","tag-road","tag-summer","tag-sun","tag-surface","tag-transmission","tag-urgent","tag-wellingtons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}