Waka Kotahi apologises for chaos after closure of key Nelson highway

A top manager at Waka Kotahi has apologised for the gridlock on the roads around Nelson when a key section of State Highway 6 was closed for resealing.

Waka Kotahi director of regional relationships Emma Speight said the transport agency did not want to see a situation like that arise again.

“I’m more than happy to say we’re sorry … that people were impacted in that way,” Speight said on Friday at the inaugural meeting of the joint regional transport committee for Nelson city and Tasman district councils.

Her comments came after committee member and Nelson mayor, Dr Nick Smith, suggested an apology was warranted and outlined some of the effects of the closure of the Whakatu Drive section of SH6 on November 5 and 6.

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“Mums in tears who thought they were doing a 10-minute trip to the supermarket [ending up] in traffic for five hours and feeding babies on the side of the road, medical doctors who did not get to the hospital for operations,” Smith said.

“I personally believe that Waka Kotahi owes the Nelson community an apology. It was not just a little bit unacceptable, it was totally unacceptable.”

Committee chairperson, Tasman deputy mayor Stuart Bryant, pointed out the disruption affected more than just city dwellers with people from as far away as Murchison and Tapawera also caught up in lengthy delays, which made for “extremely long days”.

“It needs to be done better next time,” Bryant said.

The full closure of the Whakatu Drive section of SH6 enabled Waka Kotahi’s contractors to reseal 6km of road over two days, a job that would normally take three to four weeks using “traditional stop-go traffic management”, according to the transport agency.

However, the reseal was done at the same time repair work was under way on another stretch of SH6, between Nelson and Blenheim, which meant the highway was already closed north of Nelson. So people travelling to Nelson from the Blenheim area had to take an alternative route and arrive in the city from the south – a route that would normally include Whakatu Drive.

All the traffic was instead funnelled through suburban Stoke resulting in Main Rd Stoke, in particular, being gridlocked for long periods. That had a knock-on effect on the roads leading into and out of Stoke to the north and south.

Adding to the congestion were some minor crashes on the detour route along with the partial closure of Saxton Rd West for a major wastewater upgrade by Nelson City Council, which prevented many motorists from being able to use Nayland Rd as an alternative route to Main Rd Stoke.

The situation was particularly bad on November 5 when many parents and youngsters were travelling to and from Saturday sport.

Speight told the joint transport committee “quite a number” of lessons had been learnt.

A review had found the methodology used for the reseal was appropriate. “In terms of enabling a short period of disruption as opposed to weeks of disruption – that does stack up in terms of cost, in terms of the way that we look at maintaining the network.”

However, Speight said she was “not necessarily saying that we would do it exactly the same again”.

“We don’t want to see a situation again such as happened.”

Communication would be handled “very differently” for any subsequent closures that had the potential to be as disruptive including the use of other channels such as direct contact with sporting groups, Speight said.