Pressure ...

State Highway 1 Closed
State Highway 2 Closed
State Highway 5 Closed
Napier - Taupo Closed
Doddery's Road Open

For most of the day, we had all the North Island's traffic travelling through our highway.

Grumpy detoured travellers & heavy trucks in a never ending stream.

Most would have had at least another 100 kms added to their journey.

It is at times like this that show just how vulnerable some parts of SH 3 are.
An accident at any of our more worrisome parts of the road would have the whole Island grinding to a halt.

As it was a truck accident near Inglewood forced a local detour.
We have areas where no detours are possible at all.

A lot of money is being thrown at roading. Most is being sucked up for ring roads & motorways by the big cities.

Out here on the highway we see bugger all.

Just constant patch up jobs.

In the old Ministry Of Works days, they would start at one end of a highway, widening, straightening, bridgebuilding & rebuilding to the other end.
They built bloody good roads too.

We seem to battle away with disintegrating roads while flash new motorways are built in Auckland to get commuters to work ten minutes quicker.

As you may gather,

I'm a tired & grumpy roadworker tonight...