Cost of maintaining Whanganui’s ‘deteriorating roads’ set to skyrocket

The council approved an additional $1.72m in debt funding to cover roading work earlier this year. Photo / Bevan Conley.

The state of Whanganui’s road and footpath networks is slipping with maintenance costs expected to skyrocket over the next few years.

Whanganui District Council’s transport manager Damien Wood said he met members of the public on a weekly basis who had concerns about the conditions of footpaths and had sustained injuries when using them.

“They tell me the conditions need to improve,” he told councillors at a long-term planning workshop.

A recent footpath condition assessment identified 12,000 faults in Whanganui’s urban network.

A report from Wood showed that maintenance budgets had remained stagnant since 2018 but inflation and rising costs meant a dramatic increase in funding was needed.

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In April, the council approved an additional $1.72 million in debt funding to cover roading work for the rest of the financial year.

Before the extra funding, the budget for maintenance, operations and renewals for the alliance roading programme was set at $13,383,569.

According to a graph presented by Wood, it would need to increase to $25m by 2025/26 “to match network need”.

“[That] is just to maintain (the network) at its present level, not to improve it,” Wood said.

“That step change brings issues itself, not just from a rating point of view but also in the delivery model through the (roading) alliance.

“It can be achieved to an extent but we are mindful of the funding pressures that would put on the community.”

Whanganui’s roading alliance is a partnership between the council and Downer Whanganui.

Vegetation growth was also becoming far more prevalent, Wood told the workshop.

“Do we consider changes to our level of service around how often we maintain rural berms, mowing, and that sort of stuff?

“In a dry season, the less we mow the more there is a fire risk.”

Council chief executive David Langford said over the past 15 years, the council had underspent and under budgeted against depreciation.

“For our whole asset base, we probably should have spent around $80m more on renewals than we actually have,” he said.

“We are always losing service potential and always just going backwards a little bit every single year.”

Wood said he had also received a lot of complaints about dust on rural roads.

Denlair Road in Fordell was unsealed due to forestry operations but residents had been told it would return to a sealed surface in the future, he said.

More sealed roads meant more maintenance costs but there was “a community expectation”.

“Other points to consider are some of our rural bridges, that service only one farm.

“They are a council asset and a council responsibility. Eventually, when those items come up for replacement, some decisions will need to be made on how that’s funded and how ownership is portioned.”

Deputy mayor Helen Craig said that would be a “potentially very contentious” issue.

Any discussion about bridges would come up well in advance because inspections were made annually, Wood said.

“The key thing is, we have to change the way we do things if we want to have a level of service we’re happy with.

“Or, we would have to get more government funding.”

Mike Tweed is an assistant news director and multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.