Sign In / Register
The Northland Transportation Alliance (NTA) is warning there is no quick fix for many of Northland’s roads damaged in recent extreme weather events.
Some repairs are likely to take around two years to complete and that timeframe could be extended if Northland is hit by more adverse weather. That is because of compounding damage to some sites, meaning more cost and time involved to complete repairs.
“There is also a need to meet funding requirements, including in-depth geotechnical investigation and design aspects,” NTA maintenance and operations manager Bernard Petersen says.
“Before Cyclone Gabrielle there were 1126 recorded and monitored under slips across 1110km or a quarter of our network. Identification, recording and monitoring of the balance of the network is a slow ongoing process – based upon funding availability. That is an average of one slip per kilometre. Cyclone Gabrielle and the extreme Mangawhai storm resulted in 302 over slips and 343 under slips (84 new under slip sites not previously recorded in our database).
“The estimated repair cost for 116 of these slip sites alone is over $36 million so we are talking big money and a massive amount of work and that is just the start. That means work is ongoing to estimate the complete repair and recovery costs.
“Most of the jobs we are currently working on involve repair costs of less than $100,000 but there are several complex sites where the repairs will cost millions of dollars to complete over the next couple of years.
