A section of completed retaining wall

Te Pōporo/Bulli Point will finish later this year

The final week or so of sealing work around Te Pōporo/Bulli Point, scheduled to take place once the Covid-19 Level 4 lockdown was over, will happen later this year.

From 16 February Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency started work to strengthen State Highway 1 around Te Pōporo/Bulli Point by building a number of retaining walls and resurface 2.2kms of road with asphalt.

The resurfacing work was done at night, with SH1 detoured around the western side of Lake Taupō, because the road in this area is too narrow to allow the machinery and staff to operate safely and still let one lane of traffic through.

This asphalting work was about a week away from being complete when the country entered Level 4 lockdown on Wednesday 25 March. The intention had been for the contractor, Downer, to return and finish the work once lockdown was over. However, now that we are in Level 3 the night time temperatures are too low to guarantee that the asphalt would be up to the required strength.

This work has been postponed until the overnight temperatures will be warm enough, which is expected to be in November. Once this work has been scheduled, we will give you plenty of notice of the dates of overnight closures and detours on SH1.

The second part of this work was building the retaining walls, which saw SH1 down to one lane when it wasn’t closed for resurfacing. This part of the project has about 1-2 days of work left to complete, mainly tidying up the drainage and putting in a permanent kerb. This will also be postponed until the road is fully closed in November to minimise disruption to motorists.

The northern section of ETA will be made safer

Safety work to start on East Taupo Arterial

Work is set to restart on 11 May on the project to make the northern section of SH1 East Taupō Arterial (ETA) safer.

As part of the Safe Network Programme, $13 million is being invested to improve 12km of the ETA, between the Wairakei roundabout and the Napier/Taupo Road roundabout.

The project had just started before the lockdown for Covid-19 and was subsequently put on hold.

The safety improvement consists of widening the road shoulders to give drivers more room to pull over in an emergency, installing flexible safety barriers down the middle of the road to prevent head-on crashes and roadside safety barriers where hazards can’t be removed such as power poles, trees and deep ditches.

Between 2010 and September 2017, three people died and six people were seriously injured on this section of the ETA.
The first few months will see minor works happening on site, with activity ramping up for summer 2020/21. The project is expected to take 18 months to complete.

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More information

For more information on the SH1 Taupō projects, contact us at taupoprojects@nzta.govt.nz

Visit our website www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/sh1-taupo