Hawke\u2019s Bay Expressway four-laning project<\/a>, had been scheduled for earlier this month but was delayed by the late delivery of pile casings.<\/p>\nCrews will be working Monday to Friday in the off-peak times, between 10am and 2pm only, and possibly occasionally on Saturdays, lifting the large steel casings into place for cement to be poured into them.<\/p>\n
A statement says up to four lifts will be done every day during the off-peak work period and, on each occasion, traffic will be stopped in both directions.<\/p>\n
Delays of between 10 and 20 minutes can be expected while the lifts happen and the traffic queues are cleared, with temporary traffic management applying to 80 metres on both approaches.<\/p>\n
During the work, a large crane will lift steel piles up to 36m-long into position and, to keep everyone safe, traffic must be stopped until the pile is secure, the NZTA statement said.<\/p>\n
The work is expected to be completed by July, but other work will continue to the west of the existing bridge.<\/p>\n
The Taradale bridge also has overnight 8pm-5am stop-go management on Tuesday and Wednesday nights this week for flexible median barrier removal and road resurfacing, which had been delayed because of last week\u2019s weather.<\/p>\n
There will also be overnight closures at the SH2-Taradale Rd roundabout, starting on February 3, for flexible median barrier removal, temporary paving, line marking and installation of a temporary safety barrier.<\/p>\n
Unrelated maintenance and cleaning on the Chesterhope Bridge means it is closed until Thursday for northbound traffic, which was being diverted on Farndon Rd to the Waitangi Bridge.<\/p>\n
Havelock motorist Andrew Fulford was on his way to an appointment when he encountered the traffic detoured from P\u0101k\u014dwhai Rd merging with northbound SH51 traffic at Farndon Rd, bringing traffic to a stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a bit of a mess,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It then took a half-hour to reach Waitangi Bridge, and Fulford was thus late for the appointment.<\/p>\n
It was not as bad on the return trip, but he said it \u201csmacks of incompetence\u201d to have all three routes impacted at the same time.<\/p>\n
Another Havelock North motorist had chosen the Chesterhope route to avoid the delays, but found himself being rerouted into what became an even bigger delay as traffic banked up on Farndon Rd.<\/p>\n
NZTA principal project manager Jacob Laird, asked initially about issues with possible motorist \u201crubbernecking\u201d around the Taradale bridge site, said the expressway delays would be limited to no more than four each day, around the time of each lift. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crucial everyone has a safe journey and, as in every situation on the road, behind the steering wheel, it\u2019s critical that people always concentrate on the road ahead,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have installed temporary steel barriers to separate the northbound lane from the work and provide a form of visual barrier.\u201d Anticipating this work would create interest, NZTA has also put a temporary lower speed of 70km\/h in place.<\/p>\n
NZTA would monitor traffic flow during construction and adjust temporary traffic management as required, he said.<\/p>\n
The agency understood the timing was likely to cause some disruption over the next fortnight with daytime work also on the Waitangi Bridge and this week\u2019s work at Chesterhope.<\/p>\n
Doug Laing is a Hawke\u2019s Bay Today reporter based in Napier, with more than 50 years\u2019 experience in the news industry \u2013 most of it in Hawke\u2019s Bay, covering most aspects of local and regional news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Motorists choosing to avoid the area will mainly use the Hawke\u2019s Bay Expressway, on which new bridge work…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5432,21356,3071,16492,5910,146953,1872,5194,146952,51720,3607,111,43,139,69,90,146954,19328,78594,544,1529,61,3946,1533,102,4576,37458,1530],"class_list":{"0":"post-253842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-between","9":"tag-bridges","10":"tag-cities","11":"tag-delays","12":"tag-due","13":"tag-extremes","14":"tag-face","15":"tag-hastings","16":"tag-holdups","17":"tag-motorists","18":"tag-napier","19":"tag-new-zealand","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-on","24":"tag-postcyclone","25":"tag-reach","26":"tag-simultaneous","27":"tag-some","28":"tag-three","29":"tag-to","30":"tag-traffic","31":"tag-will","32":"tag-with","33":"tag-work","34":"tag-worried","35":"tag-years"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253842","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=253842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}