Two projects have made State Highway 1 between Piarere and Taupō safer and more efficient for everyone. And there are plans to do more when funding is available.
The Government Policy Statement on land transport 2024 (GPS 2024) has changed how we, NZTA, invests in safety across the state highway network. Safety remains a priority objective in GPS 2024, with safety embedded across all investments.
Our focus is on delivering safe roading infrastructure via the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) and Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), providing enhanced maintenance and highway resilience as well as increased support for NZ Police enforcement.
This means several state highway safety improvement projects around Taupō have been reprioritised.
SH1 Piarere to Taupō safety improvements update - Safety improvements north of Maroa Road to Tram Road and Ātiamuri/Waikato River Bridge to Thorpe Road completed with final surfacing to come. Piarere to Tīrau section in design with no further funding allocated in the 2024-27 NLTP to complete this stage or construction.
The 93km of SH1 between Piarere and Taupō has a poor safety record and there are various measures which can be rolled out to improve this – including flexible safety barriers, wide centre lines, better signage and road marking.
These upgrades mean the road is more forgiving if someone makes a mistake, with crashes less likely to result in death or serious injury.
Each crash has huge impacts on the people involved, their families, emergency services and the health sector. As well as saving lives and preventing crash trauma, safety upgrades would result in fewer crashes which would mean the highway is more efficient and can support productivity and economic growth in the region.
We prioritised two high-risk sections of SH1 south of Ātiamuri to upgrade first:
Further north, we have been investigating making similar safety improvements between Piarere and Tirau. Initial community engagement has been completed and information gained during that process has been fed into the detailed design process.
The timing of construction was subject to funding being available and the 2024-27 National Land Transport Programme does not cover this. Therefore, this project has been paused until funding is available.
Opportunities for other improvements on the rest of SH1 Piarere to Taupō will be investigated and constructed if and when funding becomes available.
We are also working on a number of safety and infrastructure improvements for the region. Find out more:
