Waikato Business News March/April 2018

WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS March/April 2018
7
Sixty year project to link city
ends at intersection
Earthworks have begun ahead of a likely
green light in June for completion of
Hamilton’s ring road.
By RICHARD WALKER
The final 400 metre stage
of the arterial route will
see Wairere Drive connect
with Cobham Drive to
conclude a remarkable journey
that has been more than 60
years in the making.
The go-ahead for the final
stage, south of Cambridge
Road, has Hamilton City Council
support and is all but certain
once the 10-Year Plan is complete.
That’s partly because the
NZ Transport Agency will fund
more than its customary 51
percent of the project, in recognition
of its value to the state
highway network.
Council’s city development
manager Andrew Parsons says
the Transport Agency will contribute
$18m to the partnership
project.
The intersection will have
multiple on and off-ramps and
walking and cycling paths, and
will see Cobham Drive raised
to allow Wairere Drive to pass
under it. It is future-proofed to
connect with proposed roading
networks south of the city.
Meanwhile, the council
has been using the tail end of
summer to get major earthworks
done on the south side of
Cobham Drive.
New stormwater pipes will
be drilled and jacked under
Cobham Drive, and there will
also be some land recontouring.
Completion of the final
piece in the ring road puzzle is
“critical” for the city to make it
more efficient and safer to get
around, and to support future
growth, said Parsons.
If the full project gets council
approval, the construction
project will go out to tender in
time for a summer start.
“It means the main contrac-
Traffic flowing over the newly four-laned
Pukete Bridge in October 2013.
tor would turn up on site with
it basically prepared for them,”
Parsons said.
It will take more than one
summer to complete, with finish
date at least a couple of
years off, but when Wairere
Drive reaches Cobham Drive,
the city will have a 24 kilometre
circuit around the city.
The full route takes in Wairere
Drive to the east, Cobham
Drive to the south and the SH1
corridor on the west.
It can be traced to a grand
plan for a motorway from
Auckland to Hamilton which
was touted as far back as the
1950s. Work began north of
Hamilton in the early 1970s
but was soon brought to a halt
by the oil crisis. The land that
was ultimately to become the
Fairview Downs section of
the ring road, and which had
been intended as part of the
motorway, lay as a green strip
of pasture for the intervening
decades.
After decades
of planning and
development, there
remains just the final
400 metre link to
complete, along with
future connections
to the Waikato
expressway.
Planners were concerned
not just with the proposed
motorway but with its links
to the growing city’s arterial
routes. One milestone arrived
Construction is set to begin on the section from
Cambridge Road to Cobham Drive. Photo: Mark Purdom.
at the end of the 1960s. The
Hamilton Transportation
Study laid down a blueprint
for roading in the city that was
to prove remarkably resilient.
It included a network of arterial
routes that were to link to
the motorway. Corridors were
identified and protected that
made the future road building
possible.
Much of the recent development
has been on the eastern
side of the river. The western
arterial route was laid down
in earlier decades, particularly
after the Second World War.
Many of those roads were
developed with limited access,
and all were built wide enough
to allow for four lanes of traffic
and are now part of the nearly
completed ring road.
The first major speed bump
had been the oil crisis in the
1970s. In 1984, the developing
ring road hit its second speed
bump. It was played out on the
pages of the Waikato Times.
“Principal condemns highway”
was the headline which
greeted the newspaper’s readers
on October 8, 1984. Plans
for a temporary state highway
in Hamilton’s eastern suburbs
looked set to “spark an
uprising”, according to the
newspaper. The temporary
highway was intended for the
corridor formed by Hukanui
Road, Peachgrove Road and
Galloway Street, as plans for
a Taupiri-Rototuna link were
revived. Opponents pointed
out the route took in several
schools, rest homes, shopping
centres and two sets of doctors’
rooms.
Hamilton Residents’ Council
president Martin Gallagher
chaired a public meeting
at Fairfield Intermediate in
opposition to the plans. It was
packed with more than 500
people, some jammed against
the walls and some sitting on
the floor. They were described
by the Waikato Times as a
“heckling, jeering crowd”.
Just over a week later, on
October 17, following a further
protest and the presentation
of a 10,410 signature petition,
the City Council fell into line.
It resolved to tell the National
Roads Board that it supported
the Taupiri link and an eastern
arterial bypass but that it also
supported local opposition to
the proposed staging of the
link and temporary use of city
streets as a highway.
It marked the beginning of a
new approach to road planning
in Hamilton. By April 1986, a
discussion paper prepared as
part of the Hamilton Arterial
Roading Study referred to the
need to take the public along.
When Pukete Bridge, a key
element in the ring road, was
built across the Waikato River
in the mid-1990s, the public
was involved through articles
in local media and consultation
meetings. The city’s sixth
traffic bridge was opened on
October 20, 1996. On that day,
up to 15,000 swarmed across
the bridge by foot before it was
opened for traffic at 5.15pm.
It was in stark contrast to
the opening, 33 years earlier, of
the ring road’s other link across
the river, Cobham Bridge. That
occasion, on June 29, 1963,
was marked by pomp and circumstance,
with dignitaries
seated on a dais and a brass
band playing.
Once Pukete Bridge was
GT Civil contracts manager Nathan Thomas, Hamilton deputy mayor Martin Gallagher
and council city development manager Andrew Parsons look at earthworks behind the
site of the new Wairere Drive/Cobham Drive intersection.
opened, there was gradual
development of the route
through to Tramway Road.
A significant staging post
was reached in October 2012,
with the opening of the Fairview
Downs section of Wairere
Drive at the same time that
Pukete Bridge was being fourlaned,
part of an $84 million
project, at the time the council’s
largest ever. It had been
enabled by NZTA paying the
full amount up front, with the
council paying back its 49 percent
share over several years.
Still ahead of the council
and its contractor, Downer,
were several linked stretches
that would carry traffic all the
way to Cambridge Road.
For the following stages,
the designers had to allow for
a green belt running along
the eastern side of the route,
restricting the road to two lanes
in places. The earliest plan,
for a motorway, would have
seen the green belt eaten up
by tarmac, but the intervening
years had seen a fundamental
change, with the ring road serving
to move traffic around the
city, and the expressway acting
as a bypass.
Progress was rapid on the
remaining sections of Wairere
Drive. The section from
Ruakura Road to Clyde Street
opened in May 2014 and the
section from Clyde Street to
Cambridge Road quickly followed,
opening in early September.
Meanwhile, Downer
also four-laned the 550 metre
section from River Road to
Resolution Drive.
After decades of planning
and development, there
remains just the final 400
metre link to complete, along
with future connections to the
Waikato expressway.
Gallagher, now deputy
mayor, said he’s delighted to be
part of a council that has voted
for the completion of the route
but added there’s still work to
be done, particularly when it
comes to getting heavy traffic
off residential streets.
He said when he campaigned
back in 1984, he hadn’t
appreciated how much Hamilton’s
population and private car
ownership would grow, along
with housing density.
“All of those factors place
Ring road Facebook
page won awards
Almost six months into the Fairview
Downs section of the ring road project,
in June 2011, the council set up a Facebook
page (https://www.facebook.com/HamiltonRingRoad)
to engage with residents.
The page was run by Brandy Smith from
Downer, and she has a knack for engaging her
readers. In between posts giving roadworks
updates, including notification of closures,
she also used the page to cheer on the likes of
the Chiefs, as well as urging driver safety and
answering reader questions. The page had more
than 2000 likes at any one time, and from the
city council’s point of view was an overwhelming
success with its ability to keep residents in
the picture.
Its success was recognised when the project
won the ''Best Use of Social Media in Local
Government'' award at the Association of
Local Government Information Management
(ALGIM ) annual conference in May 2013.
What does it take to run a successful social
media page?
Brandy says she had no training. “I just did
what felt right. I’ve made bad calls along the
way but have made many more good ones. It’s
still a learning journey, that’s for sure.
“You need to connect on a personal level,
not a robotic one, be professional but relaxed
and it is important not to engage in any negativity
or online arguments – there’s a time
and place and this isn’t it. It’s also important
to have a policy in place for when things do
incredible extra pressure on our
transport network,” he said.
“As a young man as president
of the Residents’ Council,
I probably didn't reflect
strongly enough on the need for
the public transport side of that.
I thought that just doing the
ring road would solve the problem
of taking traffic and heavy
trucks off our residential streets
but I now realise it's only one
part of the equation.”
He welcomes the link
the new overpass will create
between Hamilton Gardens and
the eastern town belt, but said
there is still work to do to make
sure the land titles get rejoined
with the rest of the reserve and
avoid piecemeal development.
Meanwhile, Dave Macpherson,
chair of the council Growth
and Infrastructure Committee,
said he was “amazed” when he
got on to council to see that the
whole route for the ring road
was already in place.
“I can't think of another
council that would have done
that. I think we're unique - we
didn't have to bowl a single
house to put that ring road
through.”
Brandy Smith from Downer who ran the
award winning Ring Road Facebook page.
get negative. Most people just want to be heard,
you need to put yourselves in their shoes and
be willing to acknowledge their complaints.
Sometimes nothing can be done but in many
cases something can. You have to listen to all
feedback, good or bad.”
Brandy signed off this year, pointing readers
to the Hamilton City Council Facebook page
for future ring road updates. She wrote her final
post, with characteristic warmth, at 10.59 on
February 21: “This page is signing off but it’s
been a great ride with you all. Drive safe Hamilton!
~B”