Quake-damaged SH1 to re-open by Christmas

The road-building effort near Kaikōura is ramping up to exponential levels, as they prepare to open State Highway 1 for Christmas. There are now 1700 people from 100 different organisations working to meet the December 15 deadline. 

A 144-metre bridge, built to connect with a network of seawalls north of Kaikōura, is on track to be the fastest build of a seven-span bridge in New Zealand history. Constructed over just 14 weeks, North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery (NCTIR) project manager James Kelly says it's the product of hard work.

"I've never done a bridge this quickly, I don't think many people have," he says. "The guys are doing 12-hour days minimum - six days a week, sometimes seven."

The road was in quite a different shape a year ago. Crews have cleared 10 major slips to the north, since the 7.8 quake hit in November 2016. They are now deep into their second phase, building a 2.8km-long network of seawalls designed to move the road out into foreshore, away from the cliff.

NCTIR coastal reinstatement manager Cherie Leckner says it's been designed this way for safety reasons.

"A lot of the hillside around this area is severely fractured, and no matter how much earthworks or related work we did to that, we were never able to take away the risk."

It's a serious of feat of engineering, with more than 7000 seawall blocks (each weighing five tonnes) to keep the ocean at bay. With opening day just a month away, parts of the damaged road are starting to look like a highway again. It will soon have two lanes, with seal going in next week.

Newshub.