Bottleneck at the Bridge

The Challenge race is the big event today. Watched at this bridge, and generally things flowed. Occasionally a water bottle dropped off with the bumps of the "clip-on" part of the bridge. Overall its pretty smooth as its temporarily carpeted.

This year the male winner did the race in 8 hours 38 m and the female winner was about an hour longer, not bad for the 3.8 k long swim, 180 bike ride and 42.2 Km run.

This bridge is one of the main routes from the East to West Coast of New Zealand.
A few years ago they looked at widening this however the test drill only found pug a soft grey clay that is structurally weak. The current bridge has piles down into this, and has been there for ages, but is not strong enough to add on to the side, and the other option is to do a second similar bridge. I think its in the "too hard basket" Really should be two lane as its a major route and the population in this area is growing rapidly.