Rush-hour traffic through Kensington: Think ahead, plan ahead.

“If you are travelling in rush hour, plan ahead,” that’s the message to drivers heading through the Kensington/Kamo/Nixon St intersection this year.

Work is about to begin on the last nine-months of improvements to Nixon Street and its intersection with Kamo Road and Kensington Avenue. The contract for the $4.3million job has been let to United Civil and message boards have gone up around the work area.

Nixon Street

“For the next six weeks or so we will focus on widening Nixon Street,” said Whangarei District Council Project Manager Mark Seakins.

“Work will be happening on both sides of the road. We will be clearing parts of the sections along the northern side to widen the road, and we will be sorting out the services – power, phone, water, stormwater, gas and fibre on the other side of the road. At the Mill/Nixon intersection, overhead power and phone lines will be going underground.

“We will then carry on with the pavement widening works. The new, wider, Nixon Street will be sealed and finished at the end of June.”

Intersection

“While the pavement widening work takes place on Nixon Street, we will be relocating the services that run alongside Kamo Road and Kensington Ave,” Mr Seakins said.

“We will be giving plenty of notice to residents along this stretch before we interrupt the supply of any of these services, and interruptions should be for short periods.”

“This work will remove the current zig-zag between Kensington Ave and Nixon Street, and will also allow us to widen the northern Kamo Road approach to the intersection. That will provide longer lanes for vehicles waiting at the intersection. The new, signalised intersection will be completed in December.

Driving advice

“The changes along these pieces of road will be pretty easy for people to follow if they travelled through the work we did last year at the Mill/Nixon intersection. We have big message boards up along the route advising of the changes, and will have cones and barriers to control traffic where necessary. Most of the time the work will be easy to negotiate and provide good access to the houses and businesses along Kensington Ave, Kamo Road and Nixon Street.

“During the construction, there will be two no-right-turns going north and south through the intersection. People coming south will not be able to turn right off Kamo onto Kensington, and people coming north won’t be able to turn right off Kamo onto Nixon. Detours for these movements will be clearly posted,” Mr Seakins said.

“Our main piece of advice is to people who are travelling in rush hour – around 7.30-9:00am and 3.30-5.30pm – is to think ahead well before you get to this intersection. Choose your route before you leave your house or workplace, not once you hit the queue.

“During rush hour through-traffic coming in from the Tikipunga area should consider accessing Hatea or Bank Street via Mill Road, or Western Hills Drive, via Spedding’s Road, Puna Rere Drive to get to the southern parts of the city.

“During rush hour through-traffic coming in from Kamo should consider using Western Hills Drive, via Spedding’s Road, Puna Rere Drive.

“Bear in mind that the NZTA is also doing work on Western Hills Drive. Doing these works at the same time will increase disruption, but condense it into a shorter timeframe, and we are coordinating with each other to make things flow as smoothly as possible over-all.”

Whangarei District Council Infrastructure Services Committee Chairman Greg Martin said it was important to remember the inconvenience now will be off-set by better travelling in future.

“All this work we are doing around the District now is driven by growth – we are becoming a significant urban centre, and just as there are pluses that go with that, there are also growing pains. Given the options of a growing, a stagnating or a shrinking economy, I certainly know what I would prefer and a bit of short-to-medium term traffic congestion is a price that’s worth paying.”

ends

© Scoop Media