Brynderwyn Hills out of action again.

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#3261897 20-Jul-2024 18:32

Gurezaemon:

I came north through that way a couple of hours ago, and was detoured via SH12 and then a VERY windy dirt road. Half way along the dirt road, there were several fire engines, lots of police cars, an ambulance, and the rescue helicopter, as someone had driven down a bank into a swollen river :(

And while there may not have been that much rain in millimetre terms, there is surface flooding all over the place up here, which indicates it was pretty intense, rather than long lasted. The work on the Brynderwyns was only finished a few weeks back, and already the hill is starting to come down again.

The situation is getting stupid. As I understand it, the population of people who live in Northland and who get cut off whenever the Brynderwyns or Dome Valley get blocked (any decent rain storm) is similar to the population of Wellington city, and it's growing at a furious rate as people who are OK commuting to Auckland move north. The lack of foresight by all politicians is very frustrating.

Hi, I live in Kaipara.

You missed the turnoff at Kaiwaka and instead detoured via Doctor's Hills Rd/Gorge Rd. It's not a pleasant drive. :)

Fwiw Cove Rd is the normal detour when SH1 is closed over the Brynderwyns hill.

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#3261918 20-Jul-2024 20:33

K8Toledo:

Gurezaemon:

I came north through that way a couple of hours ago, and was detoured via SH12 and then a VERY windy dirt road.

Hi, I live in Kaipara.

You missed the turnoff at Kaiwaka and instead detoured via Doctor's Hills Rd/Gorge Rd. It's not a pleasant drive. :)

Fwiw Cove Rd is the normal detour when SH1 is closed over the Brynderwyns hill.

Hehehe. Nope, it was intentional. I had to use the Mangawhai road from Waipu to Mangawhai a few weeks ago while SH1 was still shut, and it was... horrible. Never again if I can help it. Nose to tail traffic, a series of one-way bridges, and lots of aggro (ute) drivers trying to overtake.

The Doctor's Hill road, while windy was very scenic and weirdly, had almost zero cars on it. I passed one going the other way over the whole trip on the gravel road.

FWIW, there were no signs up at Kaiwaka, so I just followed what Google Maps suggested, and it worked out fine.

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#3261930 20-Jul-2024 22:16

Gurezaemon:

Hehehe. Nope, it was intentional. I had to use the Mangawhai road from Waipu to Mangawhai a few weeks ago while SH1 was still shut, and it was... horrible. Never again if I can help it. Nose to tail traffic, a series of one-way bridges, and lots of aggro (ute) drivers trying to overtake.

Would this be on a weekend by chance?

The Mangas - Waipu route is Cove Rd, during the week traffic flow isn't bad with most regular commuters ignoring the ridiculously low 60Kph/80Kph speed limits imposed last year (used to be 100Kph), but come weekends it can be clogged with tourist/holidaymaker traffic, and there are just two places to pass. So even one slow vehicle is enough to hold everyone up (or a stuck truck :D).

The bridges are controlled during peak hours but Traffic Management crews go home around 5:30pm. So best time to travel is early morning before 6:30am or in the evening.

Spare a thought for us though....bar one or two exceptions the Brynderwyns have been closed for repairs since Gabriel hit.

Cove originally was a designated detour for trucks until three trucks got stuck on the same 25km hairpin. The last one required a crane to be brought out from Mangawhai.

Last year heading north I forgot about the closure and got detoured up that Doctors Hills Rd, a road I'd never been on before. This is during Summer - the volume of dust kicked up by other vehicles was crazy.... I had to stay several hundred meters behind the car in front of me or drive blind. :)

My first and last time on that bloody goat track. :)

tweake

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#3262014 21-Jul-2024 09:00

doctors hill was originally closed to detour traffic, because every time they put traffic down it people crash. however there was so much abuse to the staff the pulled the staff and opened the road. the reason it was quiet is because they pushed a lot of the traffic out east.

the simple problem is the side roads are not made for that amount of traffic. even cove rd with all its one way bridges, waipu cove and langs which is so narrow it often gets turned into a one way road. these are back country roads meant for small amounts of traffic, not sh1 level of traffic.

they need to hurry up and push through a bypass road. even if its just a metalled road it will be fine until they get time to do it properly.

K8Toledo

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#3262156 21-Jul-2024 13:00

tweake:

doctors hill was originally closed to detour traffic, because every time they put traffic down it people crash. however there was so much abuse to the staff the pulled the staff and opened the road. the reason it was quiet is because they pushed a lot of the traffic out east.

the simple problem is the side roads are not made for that amount of traffic. even cove rd with all its one way bridges, waipu cove and langs which is so narrow it often gets turned into a one way road. these are back country roads meant for small amounts of traffic, not sh1 level of traffic.

they need to hurry up and push through a bypass road. even if its just a metalled road it will be fine until they get time to do it properly.

Cove was badly potholed until the Brynderwyns closed, then it finally got resealed. Hopefully the bypass will happen before I'm too old to drive on it (I'm 47). :)

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#3262158 21-Jul-2024 13:22

K8Toledo:

Cove was badly potholed until the Brynderwyns closed, then it finally got resealed. Hopefully the bypass will happen before I'm too old to drive on it (I'm 47). :)

more than likely it will fail completely before they even start the bypass. considering its taken 30 years to bypass warkworth, and we are still waiting on wellsford, i think we all will be 6ft under by the time they get around to doing it.

one of the other issues is the area is getting heavily developed. the longer they take, the more houses they are going to have to buy out to get it done.

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#3262705 22-Jul-2024 12:04

I have just returned from two weeks holiday in Northland. I traveled SH1, 10, 11, 12. In general, the roads are some of the worst I've ever come across in NZ, especially SH1. It's an absolute disgrace just how bad the road infrastructure is up there. I live in Taranaki and I thought I knew bad roads but boy was I in for a surprise.

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#3262774 22-Jul-2024 12:49

John19612:

I have just returned from two weeks holiday in Northland. I traveled SH1, 10, 11, 12. In general, the roads are some of the worst I've ever come across in NZ, especially SH1. It's an absolute disgrace just how bad the road infrastructure is up there. I live in Taranaki and I thought I knew bad roads but boy was I in for a surprise.

I drove trucks for many years, up and down both islands....and I couldn't agree more.

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#3262778 22-Jul-2024 13:06

In the old days roads like the Brynderwyn's were kept open/reopened by a dude on a font end loader who worked for the ministry of works or the local council.

Now we spend millions on Geo-tech and Consultants and all we get for our money is a long wait.

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#3262829 22-Jul-2024 13:16

tripper1000:

In the old days roads like the Brynderwyn's were kept open/reopened by a dude on a font end loader who worked for the ministry of works or the local council.

Now we spend millions on Geo-tech and Consultants and all we get for our money is a long wait.

the catch22 of that is because they didn't use geo tech back then many roads are in really bad places. then you required a guy full time to keep it open. no one bothered to fix the problem, they all past it to the next guy. so now you have huge amounts more traffic, economies that are highly effected, and it all hinges on a guy many many decades ago who said "she'll be right mate".

there a spot not far away where the MOW straightened up the road and bulldozed right over a spring. no one cared. so then they had sh1 constantly slipping and it cost a few million to go fix that.

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#3262833 22-Jul-2024 13:28

John19612:

I have just returned from two weeks holiday in Northland. I traveled SH1, 10, 11, 12. In general, the roads are some of the worst I've ever come across in NZ, especially SH1. It's an absolute disgrace just how bad the road infrastructure is up there. I live in Taranaki and I thought I knew bad roads but boy was I in for a surprise.

unfortunately northland gets treated poorly.

there has been a ton of work put into fixing the roads, so they are actually a LOT better now. but they are playing catch up. they ignored northland for a generation or two, and now they are paying the price.

imho one of the big problems is the cost to benefit ratio way of doing roading. places like northland where its expensive to do roading, they get pushed down the list and places with less need get done first. but the list gets redone. they don't have one list and they work their way done and its finally northlands turn, no. it gets redone and its easy to go find cheaper things to do. so expensive projects never get done until its major problem. which is why the original RONS came about. also i don't think it takes in account how long thats project has been waiting, ie how much its already cost, the cost is only the perceived cost going forward.

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#3262885 22-Jul-2024 13:41

tripper1000: In the old days roads like the Brynderwyn's were kept open/reopened by a dude on a font end loader who worked for the ministry of works or the local council.

Now we spend millions on Geo-tech and Consultants and all we get for our money is a long wait.

And excessively steep guaranteed-to-slip [*] clay slopes on the uphill side. So either we don't need the cost of the geotech or their advice is being ignored, in which case we also don't need them.

[*] See my earlier post about this, this isn't snark, clay cut at that angle will absolutely definitely slip when it gets waterlogged.

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#3262890 22-Jul-2024 13:56

ezbee:

We don't like rail, so there will not be any rail upgrades for the corridor.
So it gets more truck traffic.

The rail corridor had hundreds of millions spent on it to get it to a freight-ready standard. It then got wreckd in the 2023 storms. It's still not open, from what I can see.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/weather-damage-continues-to-indefinitely-shut-northlands-rail-line/ATIV7G7DH5BVNDHN2HI32DJBCM/

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#3262897 22-Jul-2024 14:03

That's an old story, it should be running again now.

tweake

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#3262899 22-Jul-2024 14:11

neb:

tripper1000: In the old days roads like the Brynderwyn's were kept open/reopened by a dude on a font end loader who worked for the ministry of works or the local council.

Now we spend millions on Geo-tech and Consultants and all we get for our money is a long wait.

And excessively steep guaranteed-to-slip [*] clay slopes on the uphill side. So either we don't need the cost of the geotech or their advice is being ignored, in which case we also don't need them.

[*] See my earlier post about this, this isn't snark, clay cut at that angle will absolutely definitely slip when it gets waterlogged.

going by some of the pics it looked like a fair bit of untouched sections that slipped.

however this is pretty common, its unstable land and that road has had huge amounts of repair work done. just the cost of repair work alone would have paid for a bypass to be built. its simply no one has the balls to say enough is enough and build a new road.

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