Spring has sprung, and right on cue on Sunday the temperature gauge on my car dashboard read 20 degrees for the first time in a long time. As well as sunshine, blossoms and longer days, it also signals the return to a more intensive road working season, with summer pavement rehabilitation on the way.
In fact, this year will see more works than usual. On Monday NZTA is kicking off one of the largest ever maintenance and rebuild projects to be undertaken in New Zealand, over a 220km stretch of State Highway 1 between Piarere and Waiouru. This is a new approach, bringing forward renewals works and rebuilds from as far out as 2030 and combining them under one major project. This delivers a major efficiency win – delivering 111 lane kilometres renewals in 16 months, reduced down from over four years of fixes.
Block road closures will be used on SH1, causing a detour, but speeding up delivery. Small amount of pain for a major gain.
This is how it is with infrastructure. Getting it built can be painful day-to-day, but once delivered we can’t remember life without it – it is the gift that keeps on giving. While a total State Highway 1 road closure may cause detour pain in the short term, getting it done in just over a year instead of four years of prolonged stop-go works means it is a price worth paying.
It just requires patience and understanding in the short term. I’ve had many conversations where someone is raging against a degrading road network, and in the next breath they complain about road closures! To address the former, it requires the latter – that’s just the way it is.
National Road Carriers is proud to play an important part in keeping road freight moving efficiently through these works. Recently our CTS team intercepted a planned closure that had not consulted road freight at all. A major piece of work, somehow it fell between the cracks at the road controlling authority. Once we got wind that heavy freight would be detoured past a school, not HPMV approved and that the closure wasn’t notified in a timely manner, we jumped into gear. Happily, the works commencement was delayed until these issues were sorted and operators notified about a better detour.
We’ve even helped sort a member who’s yard was continually blocked in by backed up traffic during road works, by getting an exclusion zone painted on the road so their trucks can continue to get in and out.
No task too large or small when it comes to NRC!
Happy spring!
– By Justin Tighe-Umbers, chief executive officer at National Road Carriers
