The National Party is promising to allocate $500 million towards pothole repairs if elected in October and it’s got the thumbs up from truckies.
The Pothole Repair Fund will set the target of fixing at least 2% cent of road surfaces each year to “urgently address the shocking state of our local roads and state highways”.
It will also halve the standard response rate for pothole repair from 48 to 24 hours.
“In 2022, over 54,000 potholes needed repair on state highways around New Zealand, the highest number in ten years,” National transport spokesperson Simeon Brown says.
In Auckland alone, there is a backlog of 1000 kilometres of needed road repairs, with Auckland Transport estimating it will take up to 10 years to clear.
“Potholes are a safety hazard and have been causing significant damage and disruption to freight and motorists all over the country,” Brown says.
The funding will be allocated to local authorities and NZTA to address potholes and other damage to both local roads and state highways.
The cost will be met from re-prioritising spending within the National Land Transport Programme.
This includes a reduction in expenditure on activities such as blanket speed limit reductions, speed bump installations and the Road to Zero advertising campaign,” Brown says.
“Rather than wasting money on slowing people down, giant red zeros, or expensive transport projects nobody wants, like the $30 billion Auckland light rail project, National will focus on fixing and enhancing our roading network to ensure people and freight can move around the country safely and efficiently,” he says.
Govt ‘inherited crisis‘
However, transport minister David Parker says National’s pothole pledge will take funds from other road safety initiatives to fix a problem they created.
“The current state highway maintenance budget is $2.8 billion for 2021/24 – that’s a 65% increase on the $1.7 billion that National spent during 2015/18, when it was last in office.
“Maintenance spending on all roads, including local roads, has increased by 54% since this Government took office.
“This Government inherited a road maintenance crisis. National chose to freeze road maintenance funding during its time in office in order fund high-profile new highways.”
Parker says this meant roads were resurfaced at less than half the rate they should have been.
“The state of our roads deteriorated, making them more vulnerable to damage from the extreme weather events that have hit the North Island in particular this year.”
Parker says Waka Kotahi was fixing a record number of potholes across the state highway network. It repaired 54,544 potholes in calendar 2022, compared with 39,652 in 2018.
Parker says he also questioned where the funding would come from, as Waka Kotahi’s road safety public awareness campaign funding was only $38.7m this financial year.
He says the plan would also mean fewer road police, as current funding pays for 1070 dedicated road policing staff.
“The current funding paid for police to conduct more than 2.1m breath tests and to enforce more than 37,000 seatbelt offices in the 2022/23 year.
“It would also mean building less infrastructure like median barriers and side barriers to make the roads safer.”
Road maintenance ‘has slipped’
National Road Carriers Association chief executive Justin Tighe-Umbers says Naitional’s pledge gets the thumbs up from truckies.
“Potholes are a continual hazard for road freight deliveries as well as the general public – we’ve seen record numbers of them, and a clear priority to address them is well overdue.”
Tighe-Umbers says NZTA has been stretched and asked to complete everything from modal shift to public transport, rail, emissions reduction and Road to Zero, without the extra budget or people necessary.
“As a result, the focus on getting the basics right – road maintenance – has clearly slipped. The National Party’s policy gives clear direction to NZTA to focus on the table stakes essential for drivable roads.
“It is critical that we not only keep up with the 2% run rate needed each year to replace the roading asset, but that we actually do more to recover the decades we’ve been falling behind,” Tighe-Umbers says.