Kate Hawkesby: $880 million is too much money to not account for landslides

No one is more beside themselves about the Puhoi Motorway schemozzle than me.

Well, to be fair there are probably people more upset than me, but I’m pretty upset.

I mean, finally, finally after so long, such an interminable wait, finally we got our glorious smooth new road North. The gateway to the winterless North, bypassing all the windy roads and single lane hills and crappy old tar seal.

A new perfect, smooth, pothole free, scenic and lush drive North, shaving big time savings off the journey, making everything feel easier and safer. And then, wham.

The headlines yesterday sent a shudder down my spine, because you just know our brand new highway is going to be for the high jump if they don’t secure this and fix it.

This ’slow moving landslide’ we now know about alongside it. Oh no biggie. Just a SLOW MOVING LANDSLIDE.

This new motorway was an $880 million build. It took a painstaking six years to finish. They finally opened it, we’ve driven it every single week since it’s opened. It’s only been open a month.

But now we learn, it’s got cracks. It’s potentially a safety risk, they say. Cracks have appeared in concrete barriers, and an entire section may be moving underneath it, it was reported.

Why can’t we build stuff in this country? Why can’t we do the job properly?

This motorway was supposed to be built to last a hundred years. It hasn’t even lasted a month before we have front page ‘landslide’ news.

Waka Kotahi is been criticized for ‘disjointed and reactive decision making’ in ‘not doing enough to factor in resilience at many transport projects.’ ‘This has led to ‘suboptimal and inefficient investment choices,” it was reported.

Why can’t we trust government departments to do their jobs properly? Why does this give such backward banana republic vibes? Why are we like this?

It was exactly the same with our local main street recently when they put new traffic lights in. Waka Kotahi coned off a huge area for ages and poured concrete to footpath holds for the traffic light poles - but left no room for water run off or level adjustments for rain.

Local business owners said it looked dodgy, complained that they needed to allow for rain or the run off from the new slopes would go right into their shops.

Waka Kotahi was told, they did nothing, they sat on their hands, they didn’t listen, whatever it was, the advice was ignored - and then it rained. Water flooded the pavements and poured into the shops, the whole area had to be shut down, everything dug up and re done - at God knows what cost, and of course it tripled the timeframe of completion.

So these guys have form, on even small scale projects, at not doing things right the first time.

Please for the love of God can we get some people into the Government’s transport sector who actually know what they’re doing, and get it right the first time.

$880 million is too much money to not account for landslides.

So they’re doing remedial works, at this stage they’re not shutting the highway - yet. They claim the work will be done by October, they’ll keep monitoring it, and the ‘unstable terrain’ it’s on.

And as for us Northern commuters, I guess we just keep our fingers crossed, and our eyes peeled for cracks.  

Kate Hawkesby is a political broadcaster on Newstalk ZB - her articles can be seen HERE.