KEY POINTS:
One of the country's most dangerous stretches of highway will become a quiet country road when a 7km bypass of Mangatawhiri on the main route between Auckland and Coromandel Peninsula opens next month.
The winding passage of State Highway 2 east from Mangatawhiri Stream to Maramarua Golf Course - which becomes snarled by up to 25,000 vehicles a day on holiday weekends - will be replaced by a sweeping two-lane road with ample shoulders, and passing lanes at each end.
Although these are shorter than initially planned, pruned back to meet a construction budget of $46 million, Transport Agency project manager Peter Murphy says provision has been made to allow more "passing opportunities" over time.
This has included earthworks for a potential eastbound passing lane to be added to the golf course end of the new road, possibly by the end of next year, in addition to 3.8km of lanes already built.
An underpass has been built beneath the road to reach the golf course, replacing a difficult turnoff from SH2, and the project includes two new bridges to carry local traffic over it.
Three stock underpasses have been built for the 1300ha Marphona Farms, which has had a section severed by the new road.
Although a construction start date announced just before the last election was delayed for a year after initial tenders from contractors came in too high, favourable weather means the new road will open well ahead of its amended target finish of mid-2009.
Mr Murphy said an opening date had yet to be confirmed, pending final sealing and road marking, but it would be before the onslaught of summer-holiday traffic.
That has been welcomed by Mangatawhiri residents, long sickened by the number of crashes over the 34km of SH2 between Pokeno and the Thames turnoff at Mangatarata, which have claimed 28 lives and seriously injured 56 people since 2003.
"Too many lives have been lost," said Jane Holmes, a farmer on Lyons Rd off one of the highway's most dangerous bends, on the western side of Mangatawhiri.
"It's scary for us and we are locals - we don't overtake on the highway."
Fellow farmer and Mangatawhiri Hall Committee chairman Peter Young was pleased the road-builders added an on-ramp to the western end of the project, after pressure from residents concerned they would otherwise have to back-track to the golf course to reach the new road.
But he believed the Mangatawhiri Stream Bridge, just to the west of the project, should have been duplicated to cope with traffic speeding down the new road towards it.
That concern is shared by Mangatangi Volunteer Fire Bridge chief Don Shanks, whose team has had to attend fewer crashes over the past year while construction-related speed limits were in place on the old highway.
"They've kept the speed down through the old road, but how will they keep it down on the deviation [new bypass]?"
Mr Murphy confirmed the open road speed limit of 100km/h would extend to the bypass, but said the Mangatawhiri bridge met width specifications for state highways.
Even so, he said the agency would considering widening it at some stage, as part of a continuing review of opportunities for upgrading the full 34km stretch of highway to Mangatarata.
