NORTHLAND ROADING UPDATE | AUGUST 2023
FROM KELLY STRATFORD | DEPUTY MAYOR
Information provided by the Northland Transportation Alliance, the roading department of Northland’s councils.
Across Northland we have a $35 million funding gap for roads.
With the $500 million Pothole Fund, Northland would be likely to get about 4% of that (based on historic funding distribution). That is like putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm.
What our region needs is targeted spend for drainage and upgrades to our unsealed road network.
Three hundred plus slips won’t be fixed in a month or two. It’s going to take years, continuing to make sure routine maintenance is carried out. We are looking at $35 million over five years or $80 million / $8 million per year for ten years.
Emergency works update
$20 million worth of repairs have been completed and we are still expecting $5 million – $10 million but are still $60 million short.
Setting up a Geotech panel to get the assessments underway.
Top 10 priority sites have been done.
Waka Kotahi have agreed to do progressive slip site approvals. These take about two hours per site visit and they evaluate whether to mitigate, maintain or complete renewal. (Note we are expecting to have these initial Emergency Works Assessments completed at all sites by the end of August).
There are one hundred and four complex sites in Far North, seventy three in Kaipara and twenty four in Whangarei.
These sites will be packaged up into similar groupings for tendering, based on repair types.
Repairs to date have been delivered through the existing maintenance contracts noting the usual minimum thirty percent local contractors and small to medium doing the works (or with a fifty one percent local shareholding) was lifted to fifty percent target.
As part of the resilience funding, the cyclone Gabrielle regions have been put together to look at roading resilience planning.