Gisborne and Bay of Plenty stuck with a broken highway – Editorial
A major slip on the Ōpōtiki side of the Waioweka Gorge following heavy rain in January 2026. Photo / NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi
THE FACTS
- State Highway 2, Waioweka Gorge, has been closed since January 16.
- The road is a key route between the Gisborne and the Bay of Plenty regions.
- NZ Transport Agency has not set a reopening date, estimating weeks for clearance.
Urgent conversations need to take place around the resilience of State Highway 2, Waioweka Gorge, between Gisborne and Bay of Plenty.
A gateway between the two regions, the section of road has been shut since some 40 slips crashed down in heavy rain on January 16.
To date, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) has not set a reopening date.
NZTA estimated that it would take weeks to reopen in its official statements.
In NZTA’s National Resilience Programme Business Case, published by Tonkin & Taylor in 2020, the Waioweka Gorge was the only road in the country rated at the highest level of “extreme risk”.
Despite this, the conversation over how to address this has taken years to produce action.
It is difficult to gauge the potential economic impact of the latest closure at this stage, let alone the social impact, but it suffices to say that it has transformed a two-hour journey from Gisborne to Ōpōtiki to a six-hour trip.
It is even worse for those further up the East Coast impacted by the severe weather last week, with the damage to SH35.
This is not the first time the Waioweka Gorge has been subject to prolonged closures. A series of large slips closed the gorge for 27 days in March 2012.
An 8000cu m rockfall closed the road for seven days and restricted operations to one lane for a further 13 days in 2017. That was followed by eight months of disruption by smaller events.
A large slip in June 2018 closed the road for six days, and 24-hour access did not reopen until July that year.
Last year, the road was closed for 10 hours in June after slips.
In 2021, NZTA was preparing a business case to identify ways it could improve the resilience and safety of SH2 through the Waioweka Gorge. That included public consultation for ideas.
The aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle forced a pause on the review work, which restarted in 2023 and 2024 under Transport Rebuild East Coast (Trec).
It was considering hard engineering measures and other options, including localised road-widening and vehicle turnaround areas.
Unlike the Manawatū Gorge Rd, closed in 2017 and replaced by Te Ahu a Turanga Manawatū Tararua Highway (SH3) last year, a new route did not appear to be on the table.
That was likely because the Waioweka Gorge road runs for more than 40km and a hypothetical replacement is likely to be around that length, while the Manawatū replacement was 11km and cost $824 million – $200m over estimate.
The relatively small population served by the Waioweka route also likely harms its placement on the national priority list.
NZTA said fewer than 1100 vehicles per day on average passed through the route in 2020, while it estimated the new Manawatū road would be used by 9000 vehicles per day.
Despite this, the Waioweka Gorge remains a key route for locals and businesses transporting goods.
The latest closure is a reminder that it is time for NZTA to revisit the resilience conversation with more urgency than before.