Otago travellers using SH8 to get to and from Central Otago over the holidays should have minimal delays at the Beaumont Bridge inland from Milton, says Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency.
“We acknowledge that the traffic signals which control access to the old, single lane bridge did road users no favours at Labour Weekend,” says Nicole Felts, Journey Manager for Waka Kotahi in Otago. Queues formed with lengthy delays when the traffic signal sequencing developed a fault. A traffic manager was brought onto the site to clear the backlog to Raes Junction.
“Since then the traffic light system has been phased differently to reduce the number of signals and we have a live monitor linking to our transport operations centre operators so they can manually adjust the signals if there are significant traffic flows in one direction over another.”
Miss Felts said people still needed to bear in mind that a single lane bridge on busy days will be a traffic pinch point and to take the opportunity to relax if they faced a short wait of a few minutes for the green light.
The Waka Kotahi holiday hotspots tool for summer 2022 is now available – check the best times to make your journey to avoid peak traffic flows.
Journey Planner – Summer holidays 2022(external link)
Road users on the new eastern embankment road as work crews at Beaumont plug the gap between the embankment and the new eastern bridge abutment
Work at the new bridge meanwhile will be paused from Thursday, 22 December through to Monday, 9 January, 2023.
In the week of 16 January there will be a full dig-out of the old road past the Beaumont Hotel with a detour onto Dee and Westferry Streets for SH8 road users. All vehicles can use the detour including 50MAX, HPMV, overweight and over-dimension trucks and trailers.
The second, new bridge forming over the Clutha River
