Napier road reopens down on Main Street

Main St in Napier, where seven weeks of work repairing and replacing a short length of underground cable is near complete. Photo / Warren Buckland

Residents and users of Napier's oldest street should have life back to normal by the weekend after a partial street closure to replace 6m of underground 11kV electricity cable.

Main St, between Corunna Bay and near the top of Hospital Hill and part of which is established as the steepest piece of urban road in New Zealand, has been closed to through-traffic since March 21.

Only residents' and visitors' vehicles have been allowed between Spencer Rd at the top and No 35, near The Old Mill, because of work set to be complete a fortnight ahead of a May 20 deadline.

Unison Networks customer relations manager Danny Gough said a fault was found in the cable earlier this year, leading to the discovery of other faults. This meant the road needed to be closed to establish where the faults were and ultimately the decision to replace the small section of cable.

It's not clear when the cable was laid, but Main St, up Onepoto Gully, was opened in 1857. In Napier City Council history it is regarded as the city's first street, preceding even the advent of the council which was established as the Napier Borough Council in 1874.

The house at No 35 was built in 1910, three years before the establishment of the Napier municipal electricity supply.

The supply was run for many years by council adjunct the Napier Municipal Electricity Department, which as Bay City Power was bought by Unison in 1991 amid the dissolution of the former Hawke's Bay Electric Power Board and deregulation of electricity supply throughout New Zealand.

Gough said the cable in Main St was likely to have been at least 60-70 years old, but with maintenance schedules in place was not thought to have been one to have caused problems over the years.

During the repairs supply was rerouted so work was able to be done with minimal disruption of supply.