Te Rapa Section - “Thank you for your help and support CSP”

The Te Rapa section of the Waikato expressway was opened at the beginning of December - six months ahead of schedule. When complete the Waikato Expressway will provide 102km of continuous, divided four-lane highway from the Bombay Hills to south of Cambridge, reducing the length of SH1 by 6km. The 8km Te Rapa Section begins in Avalon Drive in the north-western corner of Hamilton City and extends into the Waikato District, and is one of the government’s ‘roads of national significance’.

With the completion of the civil works for this section came the installation of safety barriers to complete the job, with CSP supplying several km’s of road safety barrier along with support in the development of a new system to use Armorwire Rope Barrier System on several of the six bridges along the expressway.

“This was quite a large project with 6,800m of Nu-Guard 31™ Steel Guardrail System, three TAU II Crash Cushions, 38 X-350 End Terminals and 7,000m of Armorwire Wire Rope System including the solution-based post system for wire rope to run over the bridge medians,” says Will Young, Sales Engineer, Central North Island for CSP.

“Will from CSP worked closely with the Te Rapa Alliance bridge design team to develop a solution for fitting wire rope barriers to bridge decks,” says Tony Dickens Project Manager for Fulton Hogan. “The intention was to fit Armorwire Rope Barrier to bridges to avoid costly transitions to the more traditional concrete barriers.”

After several months of work by Fulton Hogan, CSP and the design team, the Alliance was able to obtain approval from NZTA to use the system that they had developed together.

“This is the first type of installation of its kind on the New Zealand Roading network and now this system can be used in other situations in future,” adds Will.