Stokes Valley residents face giant queues to get out of the suburb's only exit today - and the next nine months....
Some Lower Hutt residents are spending nearly an hour in traffic queues just to leave their own suburb in the morning, with council warning this is the new normal for at least eight months.
One woman was even moved to tears as she sat in traffic yesterday, while another had to scramble for alternatives after the delays made her daughter miss the bus for a school field trip.
The “crazy” traffic is a result of remedial slip work that has begun on Eastern Hutt Road between Stokes Valley and Taita. The work comes more than a year after heavy rain brought two huge slips down, leaving some of the houses above uninhabitable.
Slips have continued to come down on the road since then. Hutt City Council has been carrying out work to stabilise the hillside. The delays are caused by the closure of one of the two southbound lanes on Eastern Hutt Road, and affect drivers leaving Stokes Valley, a suburb with a population of more than 10,000.
The traffic queue to leave Stokes Valley stretched at least a couple of kilometres back into the suburb this morning.
Drivers from Silverstream and Upper Hutt are also affected, though they have an alternative route along the motorway if needed.
The work that began this week is planned to take until March next year, leaving affected residents to question how they can be expected to cope for such a long period.
“There has got to be a better way,” said one commuter.
She burst into tears in her car yesterday morning while waiting in heavy traffic.
“Residents were told that things would be put in place to make things easier or flow better, and I don’t think anyone is seeing that.”
Council has put in temporary traffic lights to halt vehicles coming from Silverstream and Upper Hutt, but this has made only a small difference to those in Stokes Valley, and appears to have caused heavy delays for Upper Hutt residents, she said.
“We feel like we have been told to ‘suck it up, [the slip works] need to happen,’ and there’s no empathy around the stress this is causing for people needing to get to work or get home from long shifts.”
Meanwhile Praveen Kumar’s drive out of the valley has increased eleven-fold. What would normally be a four or five-minute trip to reach the entrance of Stokes Valley was 55 minutes on Tuesday.
“This is such a nightmare,” Kumar said.
“We are stuck here without any compensation and rates are going up showing [council’s] arrogance.”
Houses above the slips were left uninhabitable in July last year. File photo / Mark Mitchell
One local mum caught the bus with her daughter at 7am yesterday, taking 22 minutes just to get past the Stokes Valley Kindergarten. The roughly 850m distance would take about 10 minutes to walk, or one minute to drive in normal traffic.
By the time they reached her daughter’s school in Avalon it was 7.50am and her daughter missed her bus to go on a school trip to an interschool volleyball tournament.
“I had to rush her to Wingate train station to try get her to town,” said Tricey Reremoana.
She was grateful her daughter’s teacher was in town and able to pick the girl up from the station and drop her at the tournament.
“I know everyone’s trying their best to get this sorted. I understand it’s not easy, but we need to plan ahead for another exit, just in case we all get blocked in.”
Reremoana felt sorry for people whose jobs were affected by being late.
“Petrol prices are up, so being stuck in traffic for 30-40 minutes wouldn’t be good for their wallets, nor is it fair for Stokes Valley drivers to pay more gas when it’s not their fault.”
Another resident, Wendy, said the traffic was “pretty crazy”.
Work is under way to stabilise the hillside above Eastern Hutt Road south of Stokes Valley. File photo / Mark Mitchell
“I really worry about people’s mental health,” said Wendy, who spent 40 minutes trying to get out of the valley yesterday, having left home at 7am.
“The disappointment for me is the lack of engagement and consultation on behalf of Hutt City Council. There are a lot of angry people, and the council’s minimal communication is unsympathetic and tone-deaf.”
A Hutt City Council spokesperson told the Herald they recognised that delays “can be frustrating.
“We ask that motorists be patient as our contractors get this essential work completed on Eastern Hutt Road.
“We recommend motorists adjust their travel times to factor in delays, carpool and if possible, take public transport when planning journeys on this route.”
In a post on social media, council said they could not change the times that the work was being carried out.
“Unfortunately, we cannot restrict work to off-peak hours as this would result in a longer time-frame for the project and even more community disruption.”
Some residents have suggested keeping the other southbound lane open until about 9am to allow for the morning rush.
But council said switching daily between two traffic management plans would take up more resources and could result in confusion among road users, creating risk of incidents.
Melissa Nightingale is a Wellington-based reporter who covers crime, justice and news in the capital. She joined the Herald in 2016 and has worked as a journalist for 10 years.
