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Who Is Really Accountable for the Nation’s Unfixed Potholes?
What's the big problem?
Potholes probably aren't on your mind unless you're bouncing through one or swerving at the last minute to avoid one.
Yet, they've recently been making national headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Such as the woman who’s car got two flat tyres after hitting a pothole on a stretch of highway near Tauranga in October, leaving her and her toddler waiting for two hours in the rain and the dark until help arrived.
National capitalized on this story and launched a "pothole of the week" campaign in the same month, asking people to send in pictures of potholes.
Simeon Brown, the transportation spokesperson for National, said that the party wants to highlight the nation’s worst potholes, and they hope to get the Government to sort out the issue, as Brown believes that the government doesn’t take care of the roads and neglects basic maintenance.
The Full Picture
So, are there more potholes? And if so, who is accountable for repairing them?
During the year up to June, Waka Kotahi (NZTA) contractors fixed an average of 2,750 state highway potholes per month.
The number of people requesting compensation from pothole damage has increased, despite the fact that the total number of potholes nationwide remains unknown.
Waka Kotahi said that there had been 555 requests for compensation for vehicle damage in 2022 (through to October 7). Which included a particularly significant rise from 40 to 127 in Taranaki.
According to Waka Kotahi, potholes on state highways must be repaired (at least temporarily) within two to four days, depending on their size and location. But it is not clear how long it actually takes to fully repair these potholes.
Annoyingly, permanent maintenance can be done only during warm and dry weather, making it extremely challenging with the summer months supplying a limited time-window. In order to avoid creating additional congestion during the busiest travel season, permanent repairs are also delayed between Christmas and New Year's.
According to Waka Kotahi data, this winter's pothole numbers were significantly higher than the past three years as a result of the wet winter and the current network conditions. An example of this being a pothole on SH29 that was fixed the day the pothole appeared, but the bad weather broke it up again almost immediately.
Who Owns the Roads?
However, not all parties are equally accountable for the upkeep of New Zealand's road system.
The state highway system, which includes approximately 11,000 kilometers of fully sealed roads, is managed entirely by Waka Kotahi.
The remaining 83,000 kilometers of the nation's roading system includes local roads, which local councils are responsible for maintaining.
The movement of goods and people is the intent of the nationwide state highway network. Whereas the intent of local roads is to move people and goods around a region, and that intensity can be regionally specific.
The majority of rural roads and almost all inner-city and suburban roads are considered to be local roads. Only 61% of the distance of rural roads, which make up 80% of the local road system, is sealed.
Accountability is Two-Pronged
In a nutshell, oppositional governments have each claimed that the other is responsible for underinvesting in roads. And as mentioned, the government is in charge of the state highway system, and a wet winter has made potholes more common and consequently made it harder to fix them, so motorists have had to deal with a greater amount of pothole damage.
But, not all potholes can be pinned on the central government. The majority of roads are maintained by regional authorities and local governments, and due to the unusually wet winter, this summer will likely be a busy one for many of the nation’s council repairers.
Repairing the damage done to private vehicles however falls on the motorists. Bearing in mind the increasing amount of vehicular damage that potholes are causing, it may be a good time to consider whether your exposure to such risk warrants a reassessment of your insurance package. The last thing you need in the new year is a fiscal setback caused by a tar seal blemish on your workplace commute.