MEDIA RELEASE

20 December 2016 | SOUTHERN REGION

State Highway 7A, Hanmer Springs highway, delays Wednesday and Thursday this week

The NZ Transport Agency has some urgent rock removal safety work to do at the cliffs on the way into Hanmer Springs this week. Drivers need to be prepared for hour-long delays.

Work will take place at the Waiau Ferry Bluffs, on the Hanmer side of the bridge over the Waiau River, for two days from Wednesday 21 December to the end of Thursday, 22 December.

The road will be closed for an hour on the hour starting at 8.00am, going through to 5.00pm and reopened for as long as it takes to clear the traffic at the top of each hour. For example, if you arrive at the work site just after 8 am, you may need to wait until 9 am to get through.

Road users may see helicopters dropping monsoon buckets of water on the cliff faces and abseilers doing the rock removal/ scaling.

Electronic signs will warn drivers of the delays on State Highway 7A from tomorrow.

At the same time as the rock removal is taking place, a damaged piece of highway which is currently down to one-lane will be repaired to get it back to two-way.

“We apologise for the short notice of this piece of safety work, which became apparent over the past weekend,” says Lee Wright, Transport Agency Journey Manager.

In the New Year a permanent repair using rockfall netting may take place.

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