While \u201cminor\u201d finishing touches, including surfacing and line marking, would continue through the summer sealing season, the main work had now officially been completed, NZTA said.<\/p>\n
NZTA acting regional manager of infrastructure delivery, Darryl Coalter, said the intersection had been the scene of many serious crashes.<\/p>\n
\u201cA roundabout was chosen for its proven safety benefits and network resilience. It was also designed with a fourth \u2018stub\u2019 to futureproof the connection seamlessly to the planned Cambridge to Piarere expressway.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agency estimates that more than 20,000 vehicles use the intersection daily.<\/p>\n
NZTA first announced plans of a roundabout at the site in 2021.<\/p>\n
Downer was awarded the construction contract in late 2023. Earthworks started in early 2024.<\/p>\n
To make way for two pedestrian underpasses, the ground level needed to be raised 4.5 metres, which meant moving 100,000sq m of structural fill.<\/p>\n
Downer project manager Craig Lingard said at its peak, up to 7000 tonnes of fill was delivered daily via roughly 130 truck trips.<\/p>\n
Lingard said more than 400 people were inducted to the site and over 110,000 hours of work were logged.<\/p>\n
The team worked with local mana whenua throughout the project.<\/p>\n
At the centre of the roundabout is a 12-metre-high sculpture called Manu Rangimaarie (bird of peace), designed by the late Fred Graham, which celebrates the connection between hap\u016b and iwi to the land and river. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While \u201cminor\u201d finishing touches, including surfacing and line marking, would continue through the summer sealing season, the main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[74,1558,138,115,1259,3381,5907,1568,2082,71,23420,3120,5812,111,139,69,1118,25528,25529,25530,13109,1240,25531,1524,1530],"class_list":["post-25198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-after","tag-been","tag-business","tag-calls","tag-community","tag-complete","tag-completed","tag-construction","tag-for","tag-from","tag-intersection","tag-main","tag-make","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-piarere","tag-roundabout","tag-safer","tag-several","tag-south","tag-tintersection","tag-waikato","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25198","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=25198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}