NZ roads vs Australia: Why better highways could boost tourism - Bruce Cotterill

An iconic road sign warning of kangaroos ahead. Unlike New Zealand, Australia has roads that are fit for purpose, writes Bruce Cotterill.

THE FACTS

• New Zealand’s road infrastructure is government-funded, primarily through the National Land Transport Fund.
• The fund receives revenue from fuel excise duty, road user charges, motor vehicle registration fees, and Crown appropriations.
• In fiscal 2024, the NLTF invested $5.9 billion from this fund, as part of a total $7.5b investment in the national roading system.

I’ve spent the last week travelling. A good old-fashioned road trip, to be exact. We’ve been driving from Queensland’s Noosa to Port Douglas, along the aptly named Bruce Highway. About 1900km over five days. It got me thinking about our roads.

Our roads fell apart on the last Government’s watch. Most of us will remember how the lockdown-enforced neglect turned our favourite roads into potholes quicker than many of us could imagine. Wheels and even axles fell victim to the highway damage.

And then, the new motorway through Waikato needed repair almost as soon as it was opened. All because it wasn’t done right in the first place. We even cancelled the construction of new roads, critical infrastructure designed to accommodate a growing population, because they didn’t sit well with a political ideology.

This Government has rushed to play catch-up for the past two years. It’s a relentless task and, as you drive around New Zealand, you can wonder if we’ll ever catch up. One problem is repaired just as another is created.

Part of the trouble is that we’re not doing things properly first time around. Some roads are a patchwork quilt of rushed repair jobs, some melting or bulging at the corners and set for another overlay in the near future. Elsewhere, you’ll see a dip in the road where a hastily filled pothole once sat. Of course, the hole will return, and we’ll have to fix it again.

We still have spots around the northern region where roads that gave way during Cyclone Gabrielle lie unrepaired. Like a lot of things in life, the list of things to do just keeps on growing.

My Aussie road trip has reminded me of one of life’s simple lessons. For the vast majority of undertakings, you don’t need new ideas. You just need to look elsewhere and see who’s doing something well and copy them.

The Aussie roads are magnificent. As you drive, it’s the surface that you notice. It’s smooth. The shoulders are wide. There’s plenty of room. The tarseal finish is even to the extreme edges of the roadway. There are very few patches. Either repairs aren’t needed, or they resurface entire sections at a time. The result is a cleaner look, smooth driving and, from a personal perspective, safer cycling.

Then there are the roadworks. There are fewer of them, but those that exist are less invasive. We stopped for roadworks three times in five days. The cones and other markers are kept to a minimum. The interruption to your travelling day goes unnoticed.

The drivers are better, too. We encountered one idiot, following too close and overtaking dangerously, in 1900km. It’s a statistic that’s unachievable in New Zealand.

But it’s the roads that take your breath away.

Mid-sized cities like Rockhampton with 80,000 people, or Townsville with 200,000, have roading infrastructure that similar-sized cities like Tauranga can only dream of. It’s wide, spacious and repair-free. There’s plenty of traffic, more than you’d expect for an area like this. But it flows because the roads are as good as you’ll find anywhere.

There are plenty of things in Australia that can kill you, but its landscape is built for road trips, writes Bruce Cotterill. Photo / Martin Sykes

On the open road, it’s cruise control all the way. After an entire day of dual carriageways, the road turned to a single lane. But with plenty of space, and sensible drivers, you can sit all day at between 100 and 110km/h. Passing lanes are provided every few kilometres. There’s no need to race to the end of the passing lane like we do at home, because every driver knows there’ll be another overtaking opportunity up ahead. It’s less erratic. It’s safer. These are roads that are fit for purpose.

If you look out from the side of these gigantic highways, you can see forever. Big valleys and a flat landscape make for a scale we don’t see at home. Sometimes you can see hills or even a mountain range in the distance. But elsewhere, there are no mountains and no horizon. Just a flat land that eventually turns into a shimmering haze far off in the distance.

You stop for a break and stand on the edge of the highway. Looking out across the harsh and rustic landscape, you can’t help but wonder what lies on this land. There are plenty of things that can kill you out there. Crocodiles and snakes for a start. There are plenty of nasty spiders, too. Even the birds can get aggressive and attack if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And you can’t help but notice that everything out here in this rugged and beautiful land has a name. From the tiniest creek to the occasional dusty side road that leads seemingly to nowhere. As a New Zealander, you’ll inevitably notice that those names are almost always English. In a land where you’d expect indigenous labels, they are few and far between. There’s the Murray Falls, Butterfly Creek and a town called Bloomsbury. And Taylors Beach, the Don Bow bridge and yet another Six Mile Creek. That this stands out to us reminds us how far our own country has come.

And that’s the point. There is no reason why New Zealand cannot aspire to be the home of the great road trip, too. If the Aussies can do it, and advertise the fact to the world, why can’t we?

Of course, the Aussies have plenty of space and they use it well. It’s a massive country, and the road system reflects the scale. They’re not threading highways through narrow gorges or steep terrain, as our roadmakers have to. But those gorges, with their waterfalls and native bush, provide opportunity too.

We have the land, long and narrow, to showcase what a BBC travel commentator once referred to as “the world in miniature”. From mountain ranges and surf beaches to boiling mud and geysers, we have it all. We don’t have sugar cane, but our farmers and kiwifruit growers can provide a showcase to match the best in the world.

The story of our indigenous history is better told in our land than the Aussies have managed to do in theirs. Storytellers are a big part of tourism’s future, and ours are better than most.

And so imagine for a moment, if we added to our already impressive tourism credentials, New Zealand as home to one of the world’s great road trips. From the lighthouse in the north, through the central plateau and the Southern Alps to the signboards at our southern tip, there’s an inspiring two- or three-week holiday for any traveller. We can even offer a ferry trip in between.

There are calls for a robust highway between Northland and Auckland, like the $880m Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway,

But to make that journey great, we need great roads. Four-lane highways should connect Whangārei to Auckland, Tauranga, Rotorua and Taupō. The highest standard of single-lane roading could adorn the northern route to the cape and the bottom half of the North Island.

The coastal road from Ōpōtiki to Gisborne to Napier to Wellington is another route filled with spectacle and promise. But the road is currently a drawback. We should fix it. And if we could enhance the highway through the middle of the South Island, through Hanmer Springs, Oxford, Lake Tekapo to Queenstown, we would create more reasons to declare ourselves a road-trip paradise.

Let’s extend that fabulous repair job on the Kaikōura Coast with roading built to a similar standard along the full length of the east and west coast of our spectacular South Island.

We have plenty of people in this country who don’t like roads. Sadly, many of those people are in positions of authority. But we are a road country. A country where people don’t travel by boat or train. A country where they travel by motor vehicle.

So, rather than have roads, how about we aspire to have great roads. Roads that don’t need repair every five minutes. Roads that enhance a journey rather than frustrate it. Roads that deliver the uninterrupted pleasure of the perfect road trip.

The aforementioned Kaikōura repair job, and Auckland’s recently completed northern expressway, demonstrate that we can build great roads. We just need to change our mindset and lift our aspirations to make our roads a critical part of who we are.

It will take a lifetime, and it’s expensive. But if we make it a priority, done properly, great roads are an asset for all time. Not just for moving goods and people, but for enabling the great Kiwi road trip.

As the saying goes, build it and they will come.

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