Waikato Expressway will slow to a crawl for nine months of Cambridge-Tamahere repairs

Wednesday, 25 February 2026

Nine months of repairs to the Waikato Expressway between Cambridge and Tamahere are about to start, reducing traffic from four lanes to two.

Users of one of the busiest sections of road in the country are facing up to nine months of lane closures and frustration but say there’s little they can do other than “grin and bear it”.

Earlier this week, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) announced plans for “significant asphalt works” on the Waikato Expressway between Cambridge and Tamahere, and advised motorists “to plan ahead for significant delays”.

Waikato and Bay of Plenty maintenance and operations regional manager Roger Brady said the cost to repair the 16km section of State Highway 1 (SH1) with new asphalt (equating to 62 lane kilometres of work) would be $80 million, funded through the State Highway Pothole Prevention Fund.

The inside lanes of the Waikato Expressway had deteriorated faster than expected, NZTA said.

The section was officially opened in December 2015, making it just over 10 years old.

Brady said work will be completed in 5km stages starting March 1, and is expected to finish by late 2026.

“The rebuilding of the structural layers topped with open grade porous asphalt is designed to keep the expressway safe, resilient and ready for future growth.”

He said the road “has experienced challenges due to increasing volumes of vehicles and loads”.

Work will be carried out day and night six-days a week, weather permitting, to complete the programme as efficiently as possible.

Lane closures will be in place 24/7, and a 70kph speed limit will be in place on the open lanes.

Independent trucker Peter Thomas often drives from Hamilton to Wellington on State Highway 1, and already has a detour in mind.

“An independent review confirmed that the pavement design was considered best practice at the time of construction and that contractual performance requirements for a 25-year design life were met,” an agency spokesperson said.

“Learnings from this design, along with the performance of other roads constructed over the past decade have informed the design of the new road … the new road will cater for current and predicted future traffic volumes.”

Independent long-haul trucker Peter Thomas said while some drivers don’t have the option of making a detour, he’d be using State Highway 27 to avoid the works.

“They should not have let it get so bad in the first place, but overall, traffic has increased, so at least that part is true.

“And the hot mix option is really good, so I’m happy they are doing that instead of chip seal.

“But that’s got to be the busiest road in New Zealand, and it’s unbelievable this is happening again,” Thomas said.

“It is better than the ‘stop-go’ option, and I suppose it has to be done, so I try and look at the lesser of the two evils.

“As much as I hate it, we’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

Waipā District councillor Roger Gordon said nine months of road works would be frustrating but they had to be done before the road got any worse.

Work will be done in 5km sections, starting in March and running until late 2026.rk.

Thomas often drives from Hamilton to Wellington and said new roads had not lasted long since New Zealand started importing tar instead of us making it here.

“Trucks have got heavier, and those roads can’t handle them.

“In saying that, we pay loads on road user charges and diesel tax, so you’d expect a lot better.”

Waipā District Council Cambridge ward councillor Roger Gordon said any lane closures would be “quite frustrating”.

“When you cast your mind back to when they had to re-do the Huntly bit … after that all started tearing up reasonably quickly, it really slowed things down.

“It is certainly very important. When you're talking about renewals and repairs, they've got to be done, and they've got to be done before the road gets into too bad a state that it becomes an even larger task.”

Gordon said he hoped funding would be available to continue work on the expressway south of Cambridge in the coming years.

“We've got the situation now when traffic coming south gets to the end of the Cambridge section just before the garage … and two lanes of motorway coming into one … and sometimes that's like a parking lot.

“There's obviously going to be a bit of frustration for drivers … let’s all hope they don't allow road rage to be a vent for that frustration.”

Gordon suggested the work could be done a lot faster if they ran a 24-hour work schedule which would reduce worker downtime and overall loss of productivity.

National Road Carriers Association policy and advocacy manager James Smith said it was a “pragmatic solution” and “fully refurbishing the high-volume route will increase resilience”.

“We have seen elsewhere on the network that full width renewals produce a far better end result,” he said.