However, it also warns it will be some months before long-term solutions will be in place.
It has now been more than a month since the slip at Diana Falls first shut the road, and efforts to clear and repair the vital link in State highway 6 have been continually thwarted by heavy rain aggravating the slip.
NZTA West Coast regional performance manager Pete Connors told a Hokitika audience that the 150m-high slip would probably continue to move for some months.
"But the good news is that the side of the slip is starting to stabilise. Things are getting better," Mr Connors said.
Currently, though, the slip site was too dangerous for workers to be on.
"I hope that within three or four weeks that will change and that we can get people up there."
Mr Connors said by April of next year it was expected the slip would have been cleared of all large boulders.
"Hopefully, it will have settled enough to allow long-term protection works to be installed. This is likely to include debris fencing and benching."
Enterprise Hokitika chairwoman Jenny Keogan said the slip could not have come at a worse time for tourism operators.
"This is the most serious situation I have come across in all my years in tourism. These are our biggest months coming up, livelihoods depend on this," Ms Keogan said.
The community and NZTA needed to work together to help keep tourists coming to the West Coast, she said.
"This is dire straits for us. Something has to be done to reassure tourists to keep coming here."
Tourism West Coast chief executive Jim Little backed up those comments, saying that the biggest frustration was the lack of consistency.
"We totally understand the difficulties but there are a lot of tourism operators who are suffering massive cancellations," Mr Little said.
Tour buses were beginning to pull out of coming to the West Coast.
"There are some tourism operators that are even saying that they will have to close the doors and walk away because of this," Mr Little said.
Mr Connors said NZTA would be working on its communications with stakeholders and would also look at opening the road during certain periods of the day.
"We have looked at having the road open at certain times, say from 11am until 3pm, but we don't know if that will work for tourism operators."
He said while they would investigate the "road opening window", he warned that it could not be guaranteed.
"Mother nature has not been particularly kind to us. We have 10 seconds to clear the road if a boulder starts moving. Safety comes first," Mr Connors said.
NZTA southern regional director Jim Harlan said they were still trying to come to grips with the slip.
"We don't have any fundamental answers as we are still trying to understand the situation at Haast itself. But rest assured that we are doing everything we can to get this road
open. We understand the importance of it."
The highway between the Haast Pass and the Gates of Haast continues to be closed at night, from 6pm to 8am, because of possible rockfalls.
The highway has reopened to single lane traffic, but is subject to immediate closure depending on rainfall intensity and falling debris.
Last month a Canadian couple were killed when their campervan was swept into the flooded Haast River by a nearby, smaller landslip during a storm.
The body of Joanna Lam was found, but that of her boyfriend Connor Hayes is still missing.
- Rebekah Fraser of the Hokitika Guardian
