Cyclone Gabrielle: Redclyffe Bridge reopening plans unveiled

The wait begins, with cyclists looking at the temporary reinstatement of the Redclyffe Bridge, due to open to traffic in the next few days. Photo / Warren Buckland.

More than 150 people attended a community meeting at which the Hastings District Council revealed its hopes the temporarily repaired Redclyffe Bridge between Taradale and Waiohiki will open to traffic next Tuesday.

At the late Wednesday meeting at Waiohiki Marae, hosted by local iwi Ngati Paarau, council staff said the bridge would be open 24/7 with a 30km/hspeed limit and to be used only by light vehicles, public transport and bicycles.

The use of the stretch with the speed limit in place from the Taradale side of Springfield Rd to Links Rd, near the Waiohiki golf course, is expected to see an initial surge of traffic as motorists try to avoid the congestion on the Hawke’s Bay Expressway.

Council CEO Nigel Bickle acknowledged the wide range of people and communities at the meeting, many from Puketapu, parts of which had been separated by the storm damage, and said the focus had been on reconnecting the communities first, as opposed to being aimed at easing the Expressway congestion.

He also acknowledged one resident’s concern that the practice of evading the congestion could create greater traffic and speed issues on Korokipo Rd, between Omahu and Waiohiki, as motorists tried to escape being caught in queues. The resident asked for an at-least temporary lowering of the highway speed limit.

He said he would raise that issue with Government national highways management agency Waka Kotahi which has authority over that sector, a part of State Highway 50.

The reinstated bridge, with the Council stressing it is temporary option pending more permanent plans, includes a two-lane temporary span replacing the sector destroyed by the weight of timber and other debris in the flooding of the Tūtaekurī River in Cyclone Gabrielle on February 14.

The council’s website on Monday stated the reopening would come in the first week of August, but the council had declined to nominate a date before the meeting, where council staff stressed that there had been no delay brought about by the local community.

At the meeting council staff said the work had been continuing right up to the meeting and there was still some work to do before the reopening.

Earlier Waiohiki Community Charitable Trust chairman Denis O’Reilly said his immediate community’s interest was not in delaying the reopening of the crucial access but in ensuring that, with the road running through the community, the safety issues were properly canvassed.

He said that to be unaware of all the issues was to risk the safety of users with possible new steps having to be taken if some matters were overlooked.

The community had previously been worried that having seen the road become a significant thoroughfare over the years, bringing heavy vehicles and speeding traffic, in the presence of children and cyclists also using the road and the bridge.

“It’s ironic,” he said. “We haven’t seen a community meeting of this dimension since 1989, when the trust was formed.”

It was also the year Waiohiki, linked mainly to Taradale and Napier, became part of the Hastings District Council area.