Sumner Rd: Take a peek beyond the cordons

Beyond the cordons on Sumner Road, a hive of activity is going on as contractors work to get the critical link from Lyttelton to Sumner re-opened.

The road has been closed since the February 2011 earthquake.

^{Check out our video of the work happening beyond the cordons.} 

Mitigating the geotechnical risks, rebuilding a series of retaining walls and reinstating the road itself is a massive undertaking. To give you an idea of the scale of the project, the job involves:

• Blasting 100,000 cubic metres of rock and moving it to Gollans Bay Quarry.
• Building a 407 metre long, 15 x 18 metre high catch bench to intercept falling rocks from the Crater Rim Bluffs.
• Building a 50 metre long, 7 metre high rock interception bund.
• Re-instating 2.6 kilometres of road to reinstate
• Installing 2.6 kilometres of safety barrier
• Replacing 11,600 square metres of footpath
• Resealing 18,600 square metres of road
• Building 30 retaining walls, the biggest of which is 132 metres long and seven metres high.
• Planting 30,000 plants

The project, funded by NZ Transport Agency and Christchurch City Council, is on budget and on track to be finished so the road can re-open at the end of March 2019.

Christchurch City Council Transport Planning and Delivery Manager Lynette Ellis says the project has been extremely complex, but they are confident they will meet the deadline.

“We’ve changed the way work was programmed to squeeze a huge amount of work into the timeframe, like starting retaining wall work down the road at the same time as the catch bench work.  I think people will be amazed by the sheer scale of some of the construction up there.”