Potholes are a big issue in Northland and around the country. Photo / Peter de Graaf
OPINION
There is a theory that gained popularity in the 1980s called Broken Windows, which goes like this: “Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that, if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.”
This is as true in nice neighbourhoods as in rough ones. Window breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window breakers, whereas others are inhabited by window lovers. Rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows has no consequences — and breaking windows is fun.
So, ensure broken windows are fixed immediately, or the area will quickly become a hotspot for criminality and discontent and need to be redeveloped.
As with broken windows, so with road maintenance. If you don’t repair potholes immediately or if you let your road deteriorate significantly, no one wants to go there and eventually the road has to be completely rebuilt. Throughout the country at the end of last year, we had the siren call to the Government to “fix our potholed roads”.
Every three-year election cycle, NZ Automobile Association surveys its 1.8 million members to establish its election calls to all political parties. While it’s early days yet, it seems pretty clear this year the No.1 call will be for “enhanced road maintenance” or “fix our potholed roads”.
Last election the call was for an extra $300m a year for the next three years. That achieved a total $500m increase. This year, the call will be more like $ 1.5 billion over three years, to make some meaningful impact on a significantly degraded national network.
The call is not intended to point a finger of blame at past politics, climate change or lousy raw material. It is an apolitical position that the driving public sees as a social contract. We pay the fuel excise, road user charges, licence fees and the GST on those, which should entitle us all to drive on well-maintained roads.
It’s clear that many of our roads are like the broken windows. They are crying out for lack of maintenance and will deteriorate further without a significant catch-up. The consequences of lack of maintenance are well documented and form a long list:
Economic models have been developed and refined over the years based on the World Bank, Highway, Design and Maintenance (HDM) 111, from 1987. They continue to establish that delaying resurfacing means further deterioration, which will probably require significantly higher intervention in the future. There’s a point on most roads that you can sweat the asset to before it needs exponentially increased costs to rehabilitate. This past year, an extraordinarily wet winter has meant many of our roads are beyond that point, and now major work is needed to bring them back to an acceptable standard.
Most of our roads are made of either crushed and consolidated local stone, chip seal or asphaltic concrete (bitumen), all with varying quality throughout the country. Now with NZ Refining no longer supplying locally created bitumen, the questionable quality of some imported bitumen, and the impact of heavier vehicles on roads not designed for them, has led to the concrete industry calling for increased use of concrete as a serious roading alternative.
The concrete checklist is compelling as: longer 40-year cycles; more economic with stable pricing; safer with increased ride comfort; lack of rolling resistance for heavy vehicles; reducing fuel costs and reducing the carbon footprint of our roads. Concrete could be a serious alternative for certain roads.
The AA call, though, is for a greatly enhanced road maintenance programme. We and our roads deserve just that. It’s time to fix the broken windows.