Upper Hutt's River Road - a story of mismanagement causing death

In March 1987 Upper Hutt welcomed the long-awaited Upper Hutt bypass, which was quickly named as "River Road" to take SH2 away from the long, slow, traffic signal stopped drive through Silverstream, Heretaunga, Trentham, Wallaceville and Upper Hutt along Fergusson Drive, to a new fast route, at state highway speeds, following the Hutt River to Moonshine Rd, then crossing to the east side of the river to connect at Maoribank.  The road was one of the last major highway projects in the Wellington region commissioned by the National Roads Board (NRB), which was an arm of the Ministry of Works & Development (MWD).  In 1989 these functions would be transferred to a new Crown entity called Transit New Zealand, which would be state highway manager and land transport funder, and the MWD would be reformed into a state-owned enterprise, which would be later split and privatised in 1996. The motivation behind these reforms is a part of this story.

The new road not only saved considerable time for through traffic from the Wairarapa through to Lower Hutt and Wellington, but also better connected the western suburbs of Upper Hutt, and removed a great deal of heavy traffic from Fergusson Drive, where it interacted with pedestrians, cyclists and created safety hazards and generated pollution for the city.  Ultimately it opened up new areas for housing west of the river at what is now known as Riverstone Terraces.

However, the road was built at a deliberately low cost.  It had sign and traffic signal controlled intersections, rather than grade-separated ones.  The Moonshine Road intersection placed immediately north of the bridge was particularly poorly designed (and has since been relegated to having access to/from the highway southbound only).

Despite having a 100km/h limit, the new Moonshine Bridge was built to a 70 km/h design standard, creating an awkwardly tight bend for highway traffic around halfway along the route. It also was not built with any passing lanes, a problem which became clear soon after it was opened, as motorists complained about being stuck behind trucks, but also motorists who would stop along the route to sightsee or park by the river.  

The MWD had a solution. It did not have the funding (which at the time was part of the annual budgeting process of the Minister of Finance) to widen the road for passing lanes at the conventional highway lane width standard of 3.5 metres.  The road had been built with one 3.5 metre lane in each direction, and with sealed shoulders.  So it was decided as a quick fix, to fashion passing lanes between Silverstream and Moonshine Bridge within the pre-existing sealed carriageway, by removing the sealed shoulder so that an additional lane could be marked out.  This was done, but had several major problems:

• The lane widths were narrowed to be 3m not 3.5m
• The passing lane taper lengths were shorter than the usual standard
• The speed limit remained the same
• No median barriers, let alone painted median was installed.

The effect of building these narrow, short lanes, was devastating and a series of fatal accidents occurred over several months.  Seven people were killed in four accidents in four months.  The fatalities would continue. 

Ultimately funding was granted in the following year to widen the road so that the passing lanes were built to a proper standard, widened and lengthened.  Some years later a median barrier was installed.  It was notable that in 1988 the new Chair of the National Roads Board and Minister of Transport was also local MP, Bill Jefferies.  He would subsequently preside over reforms that meant he would not be involved in picking the projects to be funded, and to set up Transit New Zealand as a professional Crown agency a a dedicated state highway manager and land transport funder. In parallel, the MWD would be split and would have to compete with private contractors for state highway construction work. 

The clipping below highlight the celebrations on the opening of the bypass, and one article reporting the death toll and calls to upgrade the road.

In Transit - August 1996 - No. 75 - 18% increase in state highway spending and Transfund separates from Transit

The August 1996 issue of In Transit is the first edition of the Transit NZ newsletter to be published after the agency's funding functions were transferred to Transfund NZ.  This issue focused primarily on the state highway funding provided by the 1996 National Roading Programme.  Key highlights of that were:

• 18% increase in state highway funding compared to the previous year
• New projects to be funded include:
• Hastings extension of the 2-lane Napier-Hastings Motorway (bypassing Pakowhai to terminate on the outskirts of Hastings). This would later be redesignated as the "Hawke's Bay Expressway" and see SH2 relocated to this route.
• Stoke Bypass SH6 Nelson
• Albany-Silverdale extension to the Auckland Northern Motorway as the first stage of the ALPURT project
• Otira Viaduct SH73 Canterbury to bypass the treacherous zig-zag section in Arthurs Pass
• BCR threshold for project funding had been lowered from 5 to 4.5 and was expected to be 4 the following year

The newsletter also notes that the split between Transfund and Transit means "Transit can focus its energies on being the national manager of the state highway network". It was noted it would enable the agency to focus more on its professional expertise including development of a state highway strategy, so that the network was developed in a co-ordinated way.

Other points in the newsletter included:

• Progress in the State Highway Review (which reviews which roads should or should not be State Highways). Noting that the Review proposed revoking State Highway status for SH1 from the entrance of the Port of Bluff to the southern tip due to the lack of tourist traffic
• Colder weather explaining more closures of Desert Road (noting postponement of a trial of using road salt)
• Various conferences

In Transit August 1996 p1

In Transit August 1996 p2

In Transit August 1996 p3

In Transit August 1996 p4

1997: Interview with Transfund NZ Chair in Opus newsletter

In June/July 1997, Opus Consultants (the new name for Works Consultancy, the former Minister of Works and Development's consultancy arm after it had been privatised) produced its Momentum newsletter, which included an interview with then Transfund NZ Chairman Michael Gross.  The key points were:

• Establishment of Transfund was central to a wider range of reforms of the roading system.
• NZ's road network was seen as a model of change internationally by the World Bank
• Setting up of Transfund is expected to make the system more efficient by assisting development and co-ordination of national and regional strategies.  It operates like a private company, with the security of revenue to develop long-term strategic solutions.
• Gross said despite recent increases in funding (enabling the BCR for funding to drop to 4), the system is still underfunded.
• NZ has a low capital/high maintenance road system meaning roads have relatively short lives, and Transfund is looking how to optimise this.
• Alternatives to roading funding is to find ways to overcome the distortions of existing means of charging for road use, which doesn't address externalities such as congestion, environmental degradation and social dislocation.  Options it could fund include barging logs instead of massive road upgrades or new passenger transport systems to avoid building new road capacity, but is unlikely to provide funds for large projects like light rail.
• The forthcoming Road Pricing Study is expected to document options for road pricing and the need for decisions.  Options include congestion charging, suggesting use of smart card technology, and replacement of rats with some form of access charge for properties to access the road corridor, with registration covering the right to use the network.
• Gross thought a purely commercial model would be difficult to apply and need effort to ensure lightly trafficked rural roads were adequately funded, as urban areas generate far more income than the costs of maintaining those roads.

Momentum June/July 1997 - interview with Michael Gross