NZTA

Dunedin's biggest taxi operator wants drivers assured a long-running licensing debacle which threatened to undermine their livelihoods really has been fixed.

Tree-felling projects are off the New Zealand Transport Agency's "immediate" agenda as part of an ongoing Central Otago regional roading and highway upgrade programme.

A tree specialist with about 30 years' experience dealing with poplars and willows has questioned whether the trees recently felled near the Alexandra bridge on State Highway 8 were rotten.

Work is scheduled to start this month on a dump station in Oamaru to take effluent and waste water from campervans and caravans.

Southerners can no longer tolerate the "elephant in the room" that is our drink-driving culture, says Otago-Southland coroner David Crerar, who has found speed and drink, rather than a dangerously modified vehicle, caused the deaths of three Invercargill teenagers last July.

The "massive attack" on poplar trees near the old Alexandra bridge piers had further downgraded the southern entrance into the town, the Clutha management committee was told last week.

Three recent crashes on the same section of State Highway 1 north of Dunedin will be investigated in depth by the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), after emergency services attributed the crashes to black ice.

Most of about 100 submissions want the Oamaru to Waianakarua coast road kept open, even though it could cost ratepayers millions of dollars to address coastal erosion.

A long-awaited realignment of State Highway 1 at Waitati is set to start early next year, and measures including car pooling and bus bays appear to have allayed the concerns of the local community.

The beige-toned, shrouded Luggate Red Bridge on State Highway 8A will soon be brightening the days of motorists again.