Suspiciously quickly, the Government re-opened SH1 south of Kaikoura just before Christmas. Just a week earlier, Prime Minister Bill English and Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee had been very publicly harangued by a frustrated local resident in front of television news cameras. Brownlee was annoyed and said so; English tried to smooth things over. The following week, Transport Minister Simon Bridges turned up with a stop-go sign wrapped in Christmas tinsel to re-open the main route from Kaikoura to Christchurch.
Some of the contractors, too, sported reindeer ears and Santas on their hard hats for the opening ceremony. They can be forgiven. Bridges said they had gone beyond the call of duty to get the road open before Christmas. Some will say not before time, perhaps, since nearly six weeks had passed since the earthquake. But it sounds like a rushed job. The road is to be open only in the hours of daylight until the slip faces have been stabilised and traffic signals have been installed to control a single-lane section.
Let us hope political interests have not steamrollered careful consideration of all the options for rebuilding transport infrastructure in that part of the country. Brownlee's visible annoyance might have been justified. A $2 billion bill for restoration of the coast road and railway is a significant sum of national investment. It is only sensible to ensure it is spent well.
An engineer writing in the Herald last Friday, Warren Ladbrook, questioned whether it was wise to restore the road and rail at the base of hills that will remain unstable in future major earthquakes, which will occur in that region, where the plate boundary crosses from east of the North Island to the West Coast of the South Island. "Is the most appropriate solution to rebuild exactly the same thing, and put similar costs on to future generations?" he wondered.
The prospect of further slips is possible not too far in the future. Big aftershocks continue for quite some time after an earthquake of the magnitude that struck Kaikoura on November 14, as Christchurch discovered. More rockfalls and landslips can be expected.
