Compromise seals street deal

By John Cousins
Residents of Tauranga's modern subdivisions have been allowed to keep their smooth roads in a no-win decision by the city council.
The council has opted to take the rough with the smooth by agreeing to continue the like-for-like philosophy towards resealing streets.
Older areas of the city remain stuck with their rough chip-sealed streets while newer subdivisions retain their smooth hot-mix asphalt.
The decision exposes the council to accusations that ratepayers in older areas will subsidise the more expensive asphalt reseals, but it spares future councils from endless conflict forcing chip reseals onto modern subdivisions.
The council, in a recent meeting to consider its 10-year plan, resisted engineering advice to reseal all the city's low-volume suburban streets in chips - regardless of whether it was asphalt to start with.
Cr Mary Dillon said the council now had to accept the inherent unfairness of the whole thing. She recalled former city engineer Bruno Petrenas warning the council in 1992 that this scenario would unfold if developers were allowed asphalt streets in subdivisions.
The council inherited the infrastructure once developers had sold the sections.
Cr Dillon said there would be so much resistance to chip seal from residents in newer subdivisions that future councils would be picked off street by street and would acquiesce in the same way as it had done with trees.
The like-for-like road resealing philosophy was overwhelmingly accepted by the council - rejecting deputy mayor David Stewart's campaign for universal hot mix.
The decision does not affect the council's policy to asphalt all main roads when they come up for reseals. Hot mix will also be laid in areas that receive harder wear from tyres, such as the turning circle at the end of cul-de-sacs or busier intersections.
Council roading manager Brian Hodge made a strong pitch for the cheapest "fit-for-purpose" option in which ordinary suburban streets would have all been chip sealed.
"But if you want to spend money needlessly, then that is fine," he told the council.
While fit-for-purpose was $900,000 cheaper across the next 10 years, the big savings would be made when many of the city's newer subdivisions came up for reseals over the following 10 years, he said.
Mr Hodge said it was only a perception that chip seal was inferior to hot mix - they were close to equivalent. Chip seal was $7 to $8 per square metre cheaper than hot mix.
Like-for-like reseals would cost about $300,000 more per year in the longer term than fit-for-purpose reseals.
Mayor Stuart Crosby said that although there were fairness and equity issues, he said there was no way the road he lived on should be hot mixed.
"It would be a sheer waste of money. It is a ridiculous notion to hot mix all our roads."
Cr Bob Addison said he never heard the sound of car wheels on chip seal where he lived, whereas it had made a big difference on busy main roads like Levers Rd.
Cr Stewart said it was worth it to spend the extra $15 per ratepayer to hot mix all the city's roads. Like-for-like could be the most pragmatic approach, but hot mix was the only way to go in terms of fairness and equity and making a difference to the quality of life in Tauranga.
Cr Bill Faulkner said universal hot mix was a nice-to-have: "If we were not facing what we are facing over the next 10 years, I would have supported it."