By KCNews reporters
Kāpiti Coasters have had a hectic time of it over the last few years with major disruptions from roadworks and the saga continues.
The latest drama is based around what on the face of it seemed like a simple clip on for the Waikanae Bridge. Most people welcomed this as it was going to cause relatively minor disruption and would be done in a few weeks.
In September of 2022 (yes 2022) the orange coats and cones were at the Waikanae bridge site putting the Australian made Clip On together. There was a huge crane and loads of experts on site, however it seems Australians don’t do arithmetic as well as us and the Clip On was not quite the right size so it went back to Australia (presumably with a primary school arithmetic book so they could get it right), which eventually they did, and so the Clip On was back in Waikanae and ready to go only one year and four months later.
NZTA, which is the New Zealand Transport Agency, which used to be Waka Kotahi, which used to be the New Zealand Transport Agency, have contractors currently on site (except for weekends, it seems they don’t do weekends) and they find it such a pleasant place to be they plan to stay there for another five (yes 5) months.
Meanwhile Kāpiti Coasters and visitors get to drive a myriad of detours which seemed designed to cause the maximum inconvenience, maximum gridlock, significant business disruption, as well as creating serious dangers for drivers and pedestrians.
Cars, trucks, cyclists and pedestrians heading south through Waikanae are rerouted down Te Moana Rd which is increasingly looking like a main highway. From there it is take your life in your hands time as you get on to the Expressway. At least we have the surety the Expressway should cope as substantial stretches of it were rebuilt several times.
From there you can get off at Kāpiti Rd. This will test your patience as the lights only allow a few cars at a time to escape the mayhem.
One hesitates to be critical, but it would seem that traffic engineering, while not an exact science, is at least advanced enough to have anticipated a potential debacle and made plans to mitigate this.