Students are missing school, commuters are missing the train and pensioners are spending triple in petrol just to sit idle trying to leave one Lower Hutt suburb.
A slip left mounds of earth on Eastern Hutt Road's southbound lanes. File photo Photo: RNZ / Soumya Bhamidipati
They are some of 10,000 people living in Stokes Valley - which has just one road in or out.
The area has been hit with more than 30 landslips in the last fortnight, 20 of which were serious.
Two homes were red stickered.
The double southbound lane of Eastern Hutt Road was deemed unsafe last week after two slips.
The council received geo-technical reporting last Friday on part of the banks - but the top of the land is private property and the home owners need to have their land assessed by EQC, so Hutt City Council has to wait until those assessments come back in about three weeks.
Now the congested route is down to a single lane each way and traffic is creating a splitting headache for residents, some who are trying to access public transport.
Leonie Dobbs has lived in the Valley for 65 years, and what would usually take her a five minute drive to the train station this week took her 1 hour and 20 minutes.
"I went through 33 litres of petrol. The amount of carbon dioxide, the amount of cars [that are stuck in traffic] is huge, because all we're doing is idling."
At a community hui last night, residents said the issue was a safety hazard because emergency services could struggle getting through the congestion.
Another resident, Sarah, said the traffic she was facing to take her kids into Lower Hutt was making her furious.
"My kid was telling me he needed to go toilet while we were stuck, and I was like, what, am I just going to get out on the side of the road?"
"[Hutt City Council] can sit there and say that they understand but they don't, they haven't been in traffic for an hour every day."
Hutt City Council held a community hui on Stokes Valley residents' traffic woes last night. Photo: RNZ / Kirsty Frame
Hutt City Council warned locals they were in for a rough few months of disruption, but some temporary traffic management would be taking place.
Temporary traffic lights will be installed on Monday for traffic coming south from Upper Hutt to try and give Stokes Valley drivers more chance to get onto the road.
A second traffic light will be located on Stokes Valley Road.
They will operate at peak hours, Monday to Friday.
Some residents weren't convinced it would make a difference, because there was still too significant of a build up on the southern side of the intersection.
The council's head of transport Jon Kingsbury said it would constantly be monitoring the solutions and said the feedback was beneficial.
"If we need to change the timing, and have more red light for certain parts than more green, then we will do that but we will be constantly monitoring by data and physical observations" Kingsbury said.
Hutt City Council's proposed changes to the Stokes Valley roundabout layout. Photo: RNZ / Kirsty Frame
Hutt City Council chief executive Jo Miller encouraged those who could to work from home or carpool to keep as many cars off the road as possible.
Miller told Morning Reportthe council spoke to residents about potential solutions to deal with congestion, at a community hui last night.
The council was still waiting on geo-technical reports on the properties at risk from the slip and it was going to take some time to get the road back to normal, she said.
"We can make it a bit easier but it's going to be a bit of a haul until we make sure that land is stabilised and we can re-open the dual carriageway out of Stokes Valley.
"We can do things like temporary speed limits, messaging, traffic lights on the roundabouts to sort out the flow of the morning ... we could do a lots of things to ease it but it's not going to back to normal," Miller said.
The geo-technical reports on the houses affected by the slip, which were being conducted through the homeowners' insurance companies and EQC, would take at least another three weeks, Miller said.
The council was considering opening up some of its own buildings to create temporary workspaces in an effort to reduce the number of cars on the traffic-ridden road.
The Koraunui Stokes Valley Community Hub will also be opening its doors to provide space for people to work remotely in the interim.
