Last week's weather bomb should be a wake up call.

State Highway 29 over Kaimai Rangewas blocked for two days. This resulted in huge volumes and delays with northbound and Southbound traffic to Auckland and Tauranga being diverted through State Highway 2 via Katikati.

It could have been worse if the Uretara Stream bridge in Katikati had gone under water, as it has done recently, therefore taking out the only alternative direct north/south route.
Travellers and truckies would have had to take the much longer route via State Highway 1 or State Highway 27, via Rotorua to travel Auckland/Tauranga.

The blindingly obvious solution to this would be a tunnel under the Kaimai Range. There is currently a tunnel boring machine in Auckland named ‘Alice, which is boring below ground the first of two 2.4 kilometre tunnels, both 13.1 metres in diameter, to connect State Highway 20 to State Highway 16, providing an alternate route across Auckland.

Alice could be used when it has finished work in Auckland.

The Kaimai tunnel could be financed by tolls.

A tunnel would provide a permanent route, not affected by weather etc.

The cost to commercial and private interests having to divert their travel during the storm would be interesting to calculate.

D Maguire, Katikati.