2 December 2024:

Three years after the Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatū Tararua Highway project team laid the first pile on the Parahaki Bridge, they regrouped to mark the bridge’s structural completion. They are pictured here on the neighbouring Eco-Viaduct after a walkover on Parahaki Bridge, which is in the background.

“It was a special moment for everyone to down tools and appreciate what they had created, together,” Project Director Tony Adams says.

Tony says completing the 300m Parahaki Bridge and neighbouring Eco-Viaduct on schedule was a major achievement given the complexities of building such large structures over a river and a fault line in an area with challenging ground conditions and strong winds.

The bridge under construction in 2023.

The Parahaki bridge was built in 54 concrete segments, cast in situ with cantilivered ‘form travellers’.  The 305m, steel girder 12 column Eco-Viaduct Bridge is only a few metres to the north, spanning an ecologically sensitive wetland that will become a public amenity.

The $824M Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatū Tararua Highway is an alliance of NZTA, Fulton Hogan, HEB Construction, Aurecon, WSP, Rangitāne o Manawatū, Rangitāne o Tamaki nui-a-Rua, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Tāmaki nui-a-Rua and Te Runanga o Raukawa.

With a crew of up to 350, six million cubic metres of earthworks and two million trees and plants, it replaces the route through the Manawatū Gorge, which was beset by landslips and closed in 2017.