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Auckland Transport (AT) has revised its draft Unsealed Road Improvement Programme (URIP) for the next three years as a result of feedback from Rodney Local Board members in February.
AT road corridor asset manager Peter Scott told a board workshop on March 13 that several changes had been made to the almost $26 million draft programme for 2024-27, including the inclusion of Pakiri Road and the updating of some traffic counts or road classifications.
The draft URIP is the first chunk of a proposed $124.6 million 10-year spend to seal and improve unsealed roads in the region.
Scott said of the 64km of unsealed roads in the draft programme, most of which were in Rodney (80 percent or 57km), would result in a sealed surface, though most of that would be what’s known as ‘maintenance sealed’, rather than a full-blown seal extension.
Scott explained that this was because AT and the local board were trying to maximise the number of roads being sealed for the funding available. According to AT’s Seal Extension Guidelines, published 10 years ago, maintenance seal is “the lowest-cost seal applied to an unsealed road where expensive on-going maintenance has been required”.
“It’s not a full seal extension, because that’s over $1 million a kilometre,” he said. “If we cut it back to a maintenance seal, where we dress up the road, do a bit of minimal widening if required, some drainage improvements if required, and strengthening if required, then seal it, we can get the cost down to about $350,000 a km, so a third of the cost.”
One of the biggest jobs on the list is the ongoing $5 million project to seal Ahuroa Road, which is set to continue over the next three years.
Scott said the bulk of roads in the revised draft URIP had an average of more than 200 vehicles a day using them.
Warkworth board member Ivan Wagstaff asked if roads that were used as detour routes when highways were closed, which suddenly had unusually high volumes of cars and trucks using them, could be reprioritised to get better surfaces and/or maintenance.
Scott said detour routes were a separate case and he would raise that with both NZTA and the AT maintenance team.
Wellsford member Colin Smith again questioned why Govan Wilson Road, a narrow, dead-end road at the top of Matakana Valley Road, was being sealed along its length.
“There’s 111 vehicles a day and only 30 people living up there. We’re spending over a million bucks in there over three sections – it’s just completely ridiculous,” he said.
Scott said that the improvements had been designed and put in place before 2020 and still qualified in terms of all the various classification criteria and priorities.
There are 25 roads in the draft URIP for 2024-2027, all of them in Rodney except for three in the Waitakere Ranges and on Waiheke and Aotea Great Barrier Islands. The north Rodney roads on the list are Ocean View Road, Te Arai; Te Arai Point Road; Black Swamp Road; Pakiri Road; Govan Wilson Road; Old Woodcocks Road; Cowan Bay Road; Ahuroa Road; Wharehine Road; and Run Road.
All the work is dependent on $124.6 million allocated in the Mayor’s 10-Year Budget being approved by council and a successful application to Waka Kotahi NZTA for additional funding.
