Traffic has been heavily impacted by the slips. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Traffic has been heavily impacted by the slips. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Frustrated Stokes Valley residents getting "crushed" in traffic due to a huge slip at the valley entrance will soon have some relief.
Hutt City Council is planning to open another lane on Eastern Hutt Rd by the end of next week, meaning motorists leaving the valley will be back to two lanes.
Resident Matthew Crawford, who lives near the top of the valley, said a crash further into Lower Hutt recently caused so much traffic chaos it took him an hour and 45 minutes to even leave his suburb.
Locals already struggling to make it out were further blocked in when State Highway 2 was closed, causing traffic from Upper Hutt to be diverted down past the valley entrance.
On a good day since the lane closures it still takes him about 40 minutes to get out of Stokes Valley.
"I just get crushed in the morning rush hour," he said.
It has been nearly two months since heavy rain brought large slips down on the hills above Eastern Hutt Rd, threatening the homes above and cutting the route south down to one lane.
Crawford said traffic lights to break up the flow of vehicles coming from Upper Hutt could help allow the bottlenecked Stokes Valley drivers to get out.
"The most useful thing would be to help transition some traffic to other modes – would be great if a bigger percentage of kids would cycle to school," he said.
"I have a bike, but don't use it cause I got scared of the Stokes Valley traffic ... there isn't good cycling infrastructure until we get down to the riverbank. But ain't no one got a magic wand for that.
"But we do have the technology to put temporary traffic lights back on Eastern Hutt Rd for a bit."
Mayor Campbell Barry said the slip zones were "continuing to create issues".
"There's ongoing land movement and cracks and springs coming through as they're doing the work," he said.
Council had to continuously seek new advice from engineers as they progressed with clearing the area.
On Friday the whole road southbound from the Stokes Valley roundabout will be closed from 10am-2pm so abseilers can clear away debris.
The work would likely take about three days if they didn't close the road first, Barry said.
The initial plan to ease traffic woes was to open a third lane, then have two lanes going out of the valley in the morning, switching to two lanes coming in in the evening.
Houses above the slips had to be evacuated. Photo / Mark Mitchell
But health and safety advice to council showed it would be difficult to manage the switching of the lanes each day and there was a risk for issues if motorists became confused.
The chosen solution to have two static lanes leave the valley and one lane coming in would make a significant difference.
"I completely understand the frustrating and disruption that's being caused," said Barry.
He was receiving messages and having conversations daily with residents about the situation.
He reminded residents if they drove past the site and didn't see any work happening, it was likely because council was waiting on further engineering reports.
