Mayors on both sides of the Awakino Gorge and the road freight industry are asking the government to spend $25 million turning a narrow back country gravel road into a proper detour, so that Taranaki is not effectively cut off from the Waikato every time State Highway 3 shuts.
The road they have in mind is Taumatamaire Road, which leaves SH3 a few hundred metres off Ladies Mile at Awakino and runs 22 kilometres through farmland before rejoining the highway network well clear of the gorge. At the moment it is a single-lane metal road, and the sign at the entrance tells drivers exactly what to expect. In black capitals on yellow it reads “Caution, extreme care needed – narrow winding road next 22 kilometres – not suitable for heavy vehicles”.
The case for spending money on it rests on how often the gorge fails. SH3 through Awakino has now closed nine separate times in the past 12 months, sometimes for days at a stretch, and an Infometrics report commissioned by Venture Taranaki puts the direct cost to businesses and individuals forced onto alternative routes at up to a million dollars a day. Newswire has covered why the papa mudstone in the gorge keeps giving way and what the repairs are meant to fix.
Bryan Lester, who runs the butcher shop at Mōkau and has watched his till go quiet through closure after closure, drove the route with RNZ reporter Robin Martin and said the road was better than its reputation.
“Taumatamaire Road, I use it mainly just for pig hunting or as an alternative to get around the gorge when it’s shut,” he said. “There’s quite a few corners on the road, but to be honest it’s a nice drive. It’s not dangerous. Once you get up on to the top it’s all beautiful table top land. The views are outstanding, they’re amazing.”
He went further than a detour and suggested the highway itself might be better off up on the terrace country. “I think it makes more sense to have the road up here. It’s not as prone to slipping, undercuts and everything,” he said. “I think because we are up on top we’re not through a gorge where you’re going to get continual water flow, water movement, the land itself moving.”
Waitomo mayor John Robertson, whose district holds the northern end of the gorge, backed the upgrade. “I think getting a bypass route when the Awakino Gorge is closed by slips is really important,” he said. “Important for the trucking industry, important for the general public and Taumatamaire Road seems to be the obvious choice.”
Robertson said it was ironic that so much public money was going into the Mt Messenger Bypass further south while there was reluctance to commit anything like it at Awakino. “The Crown is spending, I don’t know, $800 million or maybe it’s going to be a billion dollars on Mt Messenger,” he said. “So, here we are investing a huge amount on State Highway 3 in the southern part and having an Awakino Gorge section that, you know, collapses from time to time.”
His figures are an estimate rather than a published number. The NZ Transport Agency board has approved up to $590 million to finish the southern and central sections of Mt Messenger, up from a budget of $365 million reported in early 2025, and the northern section will not be costed until the remaining legal challenges over land acquisition are resolved. The final bill is still unknown, but it is already an order of magnitude larger than what Taranaki is asking for at Awakino.
Chris Wise, who runs the Mōkau earthmoving firm Wise Contracting, said the arithmetic was obvious to him. “To me it’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s going to be a lot of money, but there’s no rail link north of New Plymouth, so you need a pretty resilient road,” he said.
Dom Kalasih, who heads the industry group Transporting New Zealand, put a number on the freight side of the problem. He said a closed gorge costs the transport sector $640,000 a day, and that on those figures the upgrade would pay for itself remarkably quickly. “Doing the benefit cost, if $25 million has to be invested to upgrade Taumatamaire Road the break-even point for that is four days of closures a year,” he said. With nine closures in 12 months, the gorge is well past that threshold.
Kalasih’s question is whether the $50 million the government set aside for the Awakino Gorge in this year’s Budget, carved out of a wider $400 million package for strengthening vulnerable parts of the state highway network, would do more good spent on an emergency detour than on the gorge itself.
The Transport Agency is not sold. In a statement it said it recognised SH3 as a critical connection between Taranaki and the Waikato and was in regular contact with councils and the freight sector. “Our crews continue to be focused on safely restoring two-lane access on SH3 though Awakino Gorge as quickly as possible. We know how important this link is,” it said.
Work on how to spend the $50 million, including an assessment of resilience options, is under way. But the agency was blunt about the state of Taumatamaire Road. “Any local road options would require careful consideration, as any route intended to operate as a safe and reliable detour for Awakino Gorge traffic would likely require significant investment,” it said. “In this particular instance, Taumatamaire Road is a narrow single-lane, winding gravel road that is unsuitable for the volume and weight of traffic carried by SH3 and, as it is a locally managed road, any investment in it would be shared with local councils.”
A business case would also have to be prepared before any funding decision could be made, the agency said. Its position remains that when the gorge shuts, SH1 and SH4 are the best alternatives and the only routes suitable for heavy freight, while SH43, the Forgotten World Highway, is not a nominated detour because of its alignment, physical characteristics and isolation. For a truck running between New Plymouth and Hamilton that means hours of extra driving each way.
The next test is only days away. The gorge is due to close completely from 6am on Saturday 22 August until 6pm on Tuesday 25 August so contractors can install three culverts at the site of the major slip that came down in April, carrying water away from the slip and into the Awakino River. If the weather stops the work, the closure shifts a week to Saturday 29 August through to Tuesday 1 September. Either way, the towns along the route will spend another long weekend watching traffic take the long way round.
Should the government fund an upgrade of Taumatamaire Road as a permanent detour, or is the money better spent stabilising the gorge itself? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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