FEATURE: Going nowhere on Wairoa's highway of hell

KATHY WEBB
The traffic lights blinking in the middle of the gorge in the middle of nowhere for weeks on end were an incongruous sight.
Surrounded by dripping ferns and wilderness landscape they were the last thing a driver carefully navigating the tortuous road expected to encounter. Day and night, cars, trucks and vans swerving around a sharp corner deep in the heart of the gorge screeched to a halt behind a queue of other travellers already stopped dead and held at bay by a red light on a metal frame chained to the side of the road.
For five or 10 minutes that seemed like 15 they would sit there, waiting while nothing happened. Then a convoy of traffic appeared from the opposite direction and roared on by. More silence, and once again the travellers waited while nothing happened, until suddenly, as if sensing imminent rebellion, the contraption on the side of the road would flick on its green light. Drivers hissing in exasperation clicked into gear, released their handbrakes, and resumed their journey along the road known as State Highway 2.
The reason for the traffic lights was perfectly sensible. A section of the gorge road had collapsed into the river during heavy rain, so it was reduced to one lane while men wearing high-visibility jackets worked on extensive repairs. Then one day, the job was finished and the traffic lights disappeared, but just a week or two later the rain came again and a rock fall closed the road altogether. It was cleared and the road re-opened, but 24 hours later a rock the size of a car landed in the middle of the road and closed it again.
Welcome to the Matahorua Gorge, a piece of rugged territory halfway between Putorino and Tutira; deep, narrow and damp; where meeting a big truck in broad daylight on a fine day requires good nerves; where meeting the same on a dark wet night is unnerving.
When it rains, a stream of water pours across the road toward the nearby river, while rocks, mud, ferns and native shrubbery tumble down the steep gorge walls and onto the road.
If it weren't so serious for Wairoa, the whole thing would be a joke, says Mohaka farmer Tony East.
Locally, the road is called "the goat track", and "it's one of the most significant detriments to development in Wairoa", he says.
Wairoa mayor Les Probert agrees. The sub-standard "so-called state highway" is preventing development in his district, while the Matahorua and Waikare gorges pose a particular threat to Wairoa's security, he says.
The Waikare gorge, which doesn't give as much trouble as the Matahorua, could easily become blocked in an emergency. And as there's no alternative route for a detour, a blocked Waikare Gorge, located north of Putorino, would effectively cut off Wairoa from the south.
However, the Matahorua is the main trouble spot, he says.
"It's the one people complain about, and rightly so."
The Matahorua's frequent landslips and closures, and the fragile, tenuous state of the road itself, are the biggest single problem hindering Wairoa's economic development, he says.
His council and the Hawke's Bay Regional Council will continue to push Transit New Zealand for a promised upgrade of the road at Matahorua.
"Our future in Wairoa depends on it. We have a burgeoning tourist industry, but some won't use the road because they're not used to that sort of road overseas. It's the number-one priority for Wairoa, no doubt about that," Mr Probert says.
Apart from being off-putting for tourists, the road through the Matahorua is becoming increasingly dangerous, he says.
Larger and larger trucks are using the road, particularly for logging. And with Wairoa's 60,000ha of productive forest coming to maturity, that can only become a bigger danger. When two large trucks meet in the
Matahorua "they're only inches apart, and when overseas visitors come through and meet one of these (trucks) it's hair-raising for them".
There is an alternative route for detours when the Matahorua is closed, over the Matahorua Road, but Mr Probert says it is seriously below par as a lifeline for Wairoa.
According to Hastings man David Renouf, who regularly takes his boat up to Waikaremoana, the detour is unsuitable for heavy traffic in wet weather when the gorge is likely to be closed, and in fact came close to bogging as trucks ploughed over it during recent heavy rain.
In 2002, Transit New Zealand estimated that logs coming out of Willowflat, south of Wairoa, would be taken to the port at Napier, adding 180 trucks trips to traffic volume on the road each day, and building up to a peak of 550 heavy trucks using the road through Tangoio each day by 2011.
That would equate to 24 percent of the road's total traffic volume.
Transit, the government organisation responsible for building and maintaining New Zealand's 11,000km of state highways, has a plan to deal with the Matahorua, but it will cost $17m at today's prices. One of the options includes putting a bridge across the top of the gorge.
In Transit's draft 10-year plan, the Matahorua project is not due for preliminary design work until at least 2013. By then, the estimated $17m cost will have gone up again, making it more of a disincentive, says Mr Probert, who can remember back to when the estimated cost was $5m.
Rex McIntyre, chairman of the Hawke's Bay Land Transport Committee and Wairoa's representative on the Hawke's Bay Regional Council, says the project won't take that long if the Government fulfils its promise of regional road funding from the 5c a litre petrol surtax it imposed last year.
Hawke's Bay's share of that tax was to be $64m over 10 years, but Mr McIntyre says pre-election promises by the Government forced Transit to re-route the tax to roading in Auckland, leaving regional projects once again starved of cash.
Mr McIntyre expects Finance Minister Michael Cullen to announce a $750m grant to Auckland roading projects in Wednesday's Budget, allowing Transit to re-route the regional tax money once again, to the regions promised their share of it.
That will bring the Matahorua Gorge upgrade forward to just a couple of years away, he says.
Hawke's Bay is already owed $6.4m for the current financial year, another $6.4 for the year beginning July 1, and the same again next year.
"So by the time we get going on the gorge we'll have all the money it needs. I hope we can do it in a couple of years' time.
"The state of that road is shocking. It's holding up the economic development of Wairoa and right up the coast. It's holding up population growth and tourism. Wairoa will struggle until the road is improved."
Mr McIntyre also raises the issue of access to hospital services. In an emergency, Wairoa residents are flown to Hawke's Bay Hospital in Hastings. Everyone else needing hospital care must travel to and fro via the Napier-Wairoa road, whether by hospital bus or private car. If the road is closed, so is access to the hospital.
Transit's Hawke's Bay regional manager, Hilton Netterville, says lack of money is the only thing preventing a start on the Matahorua deviation. Everyone agrees it must be done.
Waiting for a decision on the future of the rail line and the extent to which it would have a role in transport up the East Coast complicated the issue, making it difficult to set a priority for the Matahorua job, but the railway has now been taken out of the picture - whatever its fate - and the gorge treated as a stand-alone issue.
He, too, expects some announcement on road funding in Wednesday's Budget, although he expects Matahorua to be brought forward only two or three years, with design work starting in 2010-11, and construction in 2011-12, at the same time as the southern extension to the Hawke's Bay expressway.
Transit is due to re-assess its draft 10-year plan and come up with final forecasts by the end of June.
In the meantime, the traffic lights were due back in the gorge today. The road is to be widened at the northern end of the gorge, and travellers can expect delays for the next six weeks.