State Highway 36 (SH36) Mangorewa Gorge has had a facelift! If you’re travelling through the gorge on SH36/Tauranga Direct Road in the Bay of Plenty, be prepared to see changes says Sandra King, Bay of Plenty System Manager at NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA).
“Last year during a weather event part of the road dropped away forming an underslip. This meant the state highway was down to 1 lane and under traffic management for many months. During this time temporary repairs were done to keep the road open while engineers designed the new road realignment,” says Ms King.
Permanent road repairs started in August this year, with crews working hard over the past 3 months to fix the underslip.
“As the road is so narrow through the gorge, the decision was made to fully close it for 2 weeks to enable the crew to safely repair it. During the closure contractors removed 536 tonnes of Rhyolite (a type of solidified volcanic rock) from the bank, making the road wider and allowing the road to be realigned,” says Ms King.
Closer to Hamurana, another slip was also repaired as well as other general maintenance on SH36 including clearing culverts, pouring curb and channel and clearing vegetation along the road between Tauranga and Rotorua.
“Our contractors have done a great job under trying circumstances and a tricky location and we’d really like to thank motorists for their patience while this important work was completed,” says Ms King.
This work forms part of the government’s $2.07 billion investment into road and drainage renewal and maintenance across 2024-27 via the State Highway Pothole Prevention fund.
NZTA Journey Planner(external link)
This is kept up to date in real time so you can see all disruptive activity and potential hazards on the state highway network.
Waikato and Bay of Plenty state highway works as at 1 November 2024 [PDF, 449 KB]
