Source: New Zealand Transport Agency
A stretch of State Highway 2 Hawke’s Bay Expressway will be closing overnight for 5 nights early next month.
The closures will allow road surface testing to be carried out as part of the Hawke’s Bay Expressway Road of National Significance (RoNS) project.
The expressway, between the Taradale Road and Pākōwhai Road/Links Road roundabouts, will be closed each night between Sunday 3 August and Friday 8 August. The road will close each night at 8pm and reopen at 5am the following morning. The work will be finished by 5am Friday 8 August.
Work will be completed in sections – one section and one direction each night:
- On Sunday night, the work will focus on Taradale Road roundabout to Meeanee overbridge – the northbound lane will remain open
- On Monday night, the work will focus on Meeanee overbridge to Taradale Road roundabout – the southbound lane will remain open
- On Tuesday night, the work will focus on Meanee overbridge to Pākōwhai Road/Links Road roundabout – the northbound lane will remain open
- On Wednesday night, the work will focus on Pākōwhai Road/Links Road roundabout to Meeanee overbridge – the southbound lane will remain open
The 5th night – Thursday – is an extra night only if needed.
During the closures, detours will be in place:
- When the closure is Meeanee Rd to Pākōwhai Rd, the detour in place is for all vehicles up to 50MAX. The detour is: Pākōwhai Road to Te Ara Kahikatea, onto State Highway 51, to Awatoto Road then onto Meeanee Road (and reverse). This detour is not suitable for HMPV (that are not 50MAX permitted vehicles). A reminder that Redclyffe Bridge through Waiohiki has an 8 tonne weight restriction.
- When the closure is between Meeanee Rd to Taradale Rd, the detour is NOT via SH51 but via Taradale Road, Kennedy Road, Gloucester Street, onto Lee Road and onto Meeanee Road.
Detour maps
NZTA will also take the opportunity to carry out other maintenance activities during the closures.
About the road surface testing
During the overnight closures, project crews will using a piece of equipment to carry out Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) testing, to test the road surface.
This testing involves dropping a weight onto the surface of the road at various points along the road and measuring what, if any, deflection (bending) of the road is caused by the testing.
Hawke’s Bay Expressway Principal Project Manager Jacob Laird says this simulates the effect of a passing vehicle and helps assess how well the road surface can support traffic loads.
“The detailed design for section 1 of the expressway project is proposing to use the same type of low-noise surfacing for both the two existing lanes and the two new lanes.
“We’re essentially applying the new surface directly over the existing road surface on the current lanes. The testing is simply to confirm whether the existing road surface is strong enough to support the new surface layer. In areas where it’s not, we will focus on renewing those sections of road to ensure they will support the new surface.
“FWD testing is really common on projects like this and is a crucial step in the planning process.
“We appreciate that these closures are likely to cause some disruption and we hope that by doing the testing at night when traffic volumes are lower, together with clear detours, that disruption will be minimised,” says Mr Laird.
