NAPIER ROAD DEVIATION AT WAIPUNGA

Taupo Times, Volume IV, Issue 196, 28 October 1955, Page 7

NAPIER ROAD DEVIATION AT WAIPUNGA

Formation work is practically completed on the first section of a major cleviation on the Taupo-Napier Road, and by the end of this year traffic is likely to be using this reformed and realigned section. The deviation proposed is between the Nunneries Bridge and the Waipunga Bridge — work which had just been started before World War II. and was postponed. The first section of the deviation, north from the Nunneries Bridge, on which formation work is now practically completed, wiil eliminate about two miles of steep tortuous highway. When completed, the whole deviation will mean the removai of one of the worst sections of the highway. The section of the present highway between the Nunneries Bridge and the Waipunga Bridge, on the southern approach to the Rangitaiki Plains, is steep and winding and in odd places is very narrow. The whole deviation is a iong-range task, and the latter section of it requires considerable survey and planning before a decision can be made as to the route to be taken from the valley of the Waipunga Stream north of the Nunneries Bridge to the Waipunga Bridge. In the nieantime the first section of the deviation is well under way, from ihe Nunneries Bridge to a point some two miles up the Waipunga Valley whare a Bailey bridge crosses the stream to provide a temporary crossing until a new concrete bridge is built. A link road has been built from the deviation at this point back on to the main road. The District Commissioner of Works, Mr. D. O. Haskell, said in Napier recently that investigations were being made into the route which the remainder of the deviation •would take. " From the investigations so far, it seems almost certain that the new road will leave the Wraipunga Valley earlier than was proposed in the pre-war plans and will climb out of the valley on a much easier gradient," he said. " It then seems likely that it will follow a ridge and rejoin the road at the start of the plains at a point above and west of the Waipunga Bridge." Mr. Haskell added that much survey work remained to be done, but it appeared likely that this route would be chosen.