Partial seal like 'slap in face'

Alex Wright and other residents are not happy with the partial sealing of Wrights and McCardle Rds. Photo / John Stone

More than a decade lobbying for dusty roads to be sealed have yielded a farming community in Whangarei partial success with news that 100m strips will get tarsealed before the year's out.

The New Zealand Transport Agency has declined a $4.5 million funding request by the Whangarei District Council early this year for a full seal of Wrights and McCardle Rds in Pipiwai.

Council infrastructure and services' chairman Greg Martin said despite the unsuccessful application, strips of road may be eligible for some subsidy which would come from the district's $105 million three-year roading programme. The programme is jointly funded by the council and NZTA.

Strips in front of six houses in Wrights and McCardle Rds will be sealed before Christmas while the council will continue to push for a full seal.

But the Pipiwai Titoki Advocacy for Community Health and Safety Group said 100m strips would not solve the problem.

"It's almost like a slap in the face. The roads are still a huge health and safety issue for the school bus and other motorists and even logging truck drivers want it sealed," group spokeswoman Alex Wright said.

She questioned the sense in the council's allocating $4.5 million for seal extension on Wrights and McCardle Rds under proposed capital projects in its 2015/25 Long-Term Plan when there was no plan to use the money.

Ms Wright said once Mangakahia Rd was declared a state highway by the NZTA, funds free for maintenance of that road should be used to seal Wrights and McCardle Rds.

"The council is not fulfilling its responsibility to its ratepayers in the rural sector. We're not getting our fair share of the roading pie."

Council roading manager Jeff Devine said funding shown in the LTP for the full sealing of the unsealed sections of Wrights and McCardle Rds was based on a council request for 100 per cent NZTA subsidy which was not approved in the latest announcement of the National Land Transport Fund (NLTP).

On cost savings if Mangakahia and Otaika Valley Rds became state highways, Mr Devine said some of the NZTA share of the budget for that route would transfer back to the Government entity and its highways operation.

However, he said it was likely the council's share of the budgets would be reallocated to the rest of the council's roading network to catch up on a backlog of deferred works from previous years.

Mr Devine said the current cost to council to maintain the Otaika Valley and Mangakahia Rd logging route was up to four times the average spend on the remainder of the Whangarei roading network.

That cost, together with the high volume of heavy commercial traffic using the route, was the reason the council requested NZTA to consider taking over the route as a state highway, he said.

"Council argued that the additional cost to maintain the route should not be borne by Whangarei ratepayers, especially when the majority of the heavy freight traffic originates from forests based in the other Northland council's regions," Mr Devine said.