We say: A long road ahead

After three months, we’ve reached the end of the roading feature.

We’ve looked at roading costs, talked to academics, engineers, contractors, NZTA staff, residents, campaigners, complainers and read a stack of reports higher than a stop-sign.

After months of investigations, two main issues remain a roadblock – sealing roads is extremely expensive and there’s not a lot of money to go round.

This is not just an issue unique to Rodney. Around the country people are screaming for their roads to be sealed, but the people who hold the purse strings are blocking their ears.

Neither NZTA or Auckland Transport make any mention of road sealing in reports on their future priorities. They view the upfront and ongoing costs too high and the benefits too few to warrant ambitious sealing programmes.

NZTA refuses to make any funding available for road sealing and councils don’t want to face maintenance bills they may be unable to pay.

And so road sealing has been put at the bottom of the priority list.

One of the biggest issues is that NZTA has set the bar for funding sealing projects so high that no projects meet the criteria. This has effectively doubled the costs faced by councils.

For any progress to be made, NZTA needs to set a more realistic criteria for funding sealing, taking full account of the costs; including extra vehicle maintenance, time delays, and increased health and safety risks.

Something else has also become clear throughout this feature. Unsealed roads are incredibly cost effective for areas with hardly any traffic and it is unlikely to ever be viable to seal hundreds of Rodney roads.

Maintaining a sealed road is four times more expensive than maintaining an unsealed road and sealing roads on narrow, steep, windy roads costs about $1 million a kilometre.

From talking with contractors, engineers and other councils it seems like the cost of sealing roads is unlikely to decrease.

However more time, effort, and money should be put in to alleviating the worst effects of unsealed roads.

Maintenance programmes need to be regular. Sealing sections outside of houses most effected by dust should be explored.

Low cost sealing options for low traffic roads should be investigated. The standards used for sealing roads should also be more flexible and realistic to make sealing low volume roads more affordable.

But if something is to happen, both NZTA and AT need to treat the issue seriously and start looking at solutions.

It is unlikely they will do this on their own accord. Momentum is gaining in the campaign to get road sealing back on the transport agenda. But for it to be successful, the campaigners need to understand the costly realities of road sealing, and set some key priorities. The issue is much broader than simply increasing the sealing budget. It’s going to be a long road…