Motorists are reminded to plan ahead for southbound overnight closures of State Highway 1 Waikato Expressway at Ōhinewai, which get underway from tonight.
The closure is to allow 8.5km of temporary steel barriers to be removed, to ensure the road is clear ahead of the busy holiday period.
The temporary steel barriers were put in place to provide a safe work area, protecting construction workers from live traffic while they upgraded the state highway to make it safer and more consistent with the rest of the Waikato Expressway. The northbound section will be upgraded early next year.
While SH1 is closed to remove the barriers, all southbound traffic will be detoured from Rangiriri interchange via local roads to the Glen Murray Bridge, southbound along Te Ōhākī Road and across the Tainui Bridge at Huntly.
Motorists are asked to take extra care when travelling along the detour route by following any temporary speed limits, signs and instructions from the traffic management team.
A detour route via Waikato District Council roads is in place for General Access vehicles. It can be used by Overweight Vehicles provided they hold a permit for the route from Waikato District Council.
Vehicles without permits to use the nominated detour route (such as Overweight, 50MAX, HPMV and Over Dimension) may use SH2/27 provided they hold the relevant permits.
All other heavy vehicles are not permitted to use the detour or alternative route. They are to avoid the detour and plan their journeys for outside the closure times.
While the barrier removal work is scheduled to take up to five nights (with the last two nights contingency), the contractor is hopeful they will remove them all over the next three nights, ahead of Auckland’s regional boundary reopening on Wednesday 15 December.
If all the temporary barriers can’t be removed over three nights, our contractor will re-evaluate the programme to ensure priority is given to Auckland traffic. This may mean our traffic control team is on stand-by Wednesday night (15 December) to monitor traffic flow, and will only close the road and implement the detour to remove the last of the temporary barriers if and when traffic volumes are manageable. This may be later in the night or it may be postponed to another date.
If the work is postponed, the team will ensure the work is completed and the road is clear before everyone heads away on holiday.
Visit the Waka Kotahi Journey Planner website for up-to-date information on the road closure, detours, traffic, road works and delays.
Journey Planner(external link)
Waka Kotahi thanks motorists for their patience.
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