An experienced roading industry adviser has aired frustration and concern that Waka Kotahi is proceeding with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Centre (CVSC) situated between the two bridges north of Rakaia.
Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand senior industry adviser Jim Crouchley, said the industry has no issues with a CVSC being built, the “issue for us is the location”.
“We’ve been against this location from day one and we thought they had seen some sense,” Crouchley, a former general manager of Rural Transport,  said.
“As an industry, there is nothing wrong with policing – it has to happen to get the cowboys out of the industry.
“But it’s being put in a dangerous place.”
The CVSC is now being built as a split-site facility, with a northbound site at Weavers Road (north of the Rakaia rail overbridge), and the southbound site on the opposite side of SH1 at North Rakaia Road (between the river bridge and the overhead rail bridge) that was the original proposed site back in 2019.
“I can accept the Weavers Road site, but don’t accept for one minute that’s a safe site between the two bridges,” Croucley said.
He has spoken to a former commercial vehicle investigation sergeant who described the location as a “death trap”.
Even with the proposed reduction to 80kph along the section of SH1, he said it doesn’t give a heavy vehicle enough room to safely pull out without hindering oncoming traffic coming over the overbridge.
Crouchley said they tested two trucks, one manual and one automatic, with trailers pulling out of North Rakaia Road onto SH1 heading south.
“The fastest one of them got to when they entered the concrete abutments of the bridge was 52kph, and the other was 46kph.
“That’s the speed when they reach the bridge but when they pull out of the side road they are going to be crawling up getting to that speed.”
He hasn’t seen the plans for the site and suggested even with slip lanes for the trucks to turn off and on “they will take time to speed up and slow down”.
Waka Kotahi director regional relationships, James Caygill, said the sites will not include slip lanes.
They are proposed to include activated (electronic) speed signs, he said, which will reduce the speed limit to 60kph when a vehicle is exiting North Rakaia Road.
He said a safety audit concluded “there are no known issues at these intersections relative to the left turn in and left turn out manoeuvres”.
Concerns halted the original proposal at the North Rakaia Road site in 2019 and Caygill said a site south of the Rangitata River was “briefly considered, but was discounted due to the significant reduction in the number of heavy vehicles it would capture”.
“The most significant issue raised with the Rakaia site in talking to the freight industry and key stakeholders was the difficulty in turning right out of the site.
“Hence the decision was made to split the sites to make all turns left in and left out.”
If the issue is capturing all the vehicles, Crouchley said it is where the recording devices are placed in the road that is important, not the site the vehicles then have to turn into but they may have decided to progress as they already bought the land.
Crouchley echoed Ashburton Mayor Neil Brown that the decision to proceed at the location between the two bridges contradicted Waka Kotahi’s road to zero campaign.
“A government agency touting a road to zero campaign to reduce deaths and serious accidents on the road and they go and set a facility like this up.
“Through no control of the industry, we are going to have trucks pulling out creating havoc and motorists will perceive that as the truckie’s fault – not that they are pulling out of a Government controlled facility,” he said.

• Jonathan Leask