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Most of the tarseal is down, many of the barriers are up and there’s fresh paint lining the route. 

The long-awaited new road connecting the lower North Island’s eastern and western sides is just weeks away from opening. 

The views from the lower slopes of the Ruahine Range are breathtaking, as RNZ experienced on a drive over the four-lane Te Ahu a Turanga – Manawatū Tararua Highway on Thursday. 

We started at the Ashhurst, Manawatū, end, beginning about where the old State Highway 3 through the Manawatū Gorge ran, before crossing the Manawatū River on the first of two viaducts and then entering a steep climb. 

The old State Highway 3 is visible to the right, and the 2011-12 slip has left a clear scar. Photo / RNZ 

The road will open in June, on a date not yet set. 

Tour guide and NZ Transport Agency project spokesman Grant Kauri said the views on the road were amazing, including the peak through the gorge when starting out. 

“You can see the old Manawatū Gorge road, with Ruahine and Tararua maunga and the Manawatū River in the background. It’s absolutely stunning.” 

Clearly visible is the slip that closed the road through the gorge for a year in 2011-12, five years before more slips closed it for good. 

In 2021 construction began on the new $825 million highway. It’s expected the 11.5km route will take less than 15 minutes to drive, a big improvement on the windy and slow alternative routes in use for the past eight years. 

“We’re going up a 9.5% grade over a stretch of about 3km. In terms of context and what the fuel will be like it’s similar to Transmission Gully,” Kauri said as we climbed towards the road’s summit. 

It’s actually slightly steeper than that highway, north of Wellington. 

As we head towards Woodville, through the wind turbines, the road here looks pretty well ready to use. 

“Along the main alignment itself [we’re] finishing off the final surface of the asphalt, followed by the line marking and the median barrier installation,” Kauri said. 

“We still have a number of works open off the main alignment itself.” 

Grant Kauri says working on the new highway is a career highlight. Photo / RNZ 

Some of that is on the new walking and cycling track that snakes along near the road. 

At the summit, as the road carves through the hills, Kauri said ground conditions were challenging because of how wet it was. 

So, the road builders got rid of the unstable material, replaced it with something better and compacted it. 

There are about 300 workers still onsite and some would remain after the road opened, completing tasks such as drainage and planting. 

As the road drops towards Woodville, at the Tararua end, the slope isn’t quite as steep. 

Unlike the old gorge road, on the unstable northern Tararua Range, ground conditions here mean slips are unlikely. 

Kauri said working on the project was a career highlight – something he never envisaged when he began in the industry and used to work on the old road. 

“In my former life I was responsible for clearing some of the slips in the Manawatū Gorge. I remember some of the late callouts in the middle of the night – raining, windy.” 

Covid, Cyclone Gabrielle and challenging ground conditions were the toughest parts of this road build, he said. 

- Jimmy Ellingham, RNZ