Long Term Community Plan 2012-2022 - Hurunui District Council

Activity 1: Roads and Footpaths
Overview
The Roads and Footpaths activity includes the various functions
of street lighting, bridges and road safety, as well as roads and
footpaths.
Hurunui Community Long Term Plan 2012 - 2022
We are an active member of the ‘Hurunui District Road Safety
Coordinating Committee’. The committee has a Road Safety
Strategy which provides a framework for a road safety policy
and initiatives in our district, together with practical, long term
community solutions.
Current Situation
The Roading Network activity deals with the day-to-day
operations, maintenance and improvements of road pavement
(renewals, improvements and upgrades), signs, street lighting,
parking, cleaning, bridge maintenance, corridor management,
overweight and oversize permits, licenses to occupy and
various road safety activities. These initiatives are supported
through policy development and forward planning, including
linking in with transport and land use planning and road safety
coordination.
Our roads are maintained and built using subsidy funds from
New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and moneys collected
through local rates. This excludes state highways which are
funded and maintained solely through NZTA. Three years ago,
central government deliberately cut maintenance funding to
all district councils, as it decided to focus on capital works to
national state highways (Roads of National Significance) and the
Auckland roading network needs as priorities. Our funding was
cut by $600,000 per annum on average, for the full funding cycle
2009/2012.
Our Asset Management Plan (AMP) for roading is an important
plan when it comes to planning and deciding on upgrades,
maintenance and new work. An ongoing challenge is to match
the level of service provided by the roading asset with the
expectations of our community.
The district’s roading network comprises of approximately
1455 kilometres of local roads (excluding state highways), 278
bridges, 94,204 square metres of footpaths, 60kilometres of
kerb and channeling, 886 streetlights, 4622 traffic signs and 43
kilometres of culvert pipes. Each road in the roading network
has been categorized into a roading hierarchy (in the District
Plan) based on the road’s purpose and level of use. Of the 1455
km local roads, 1380 kilometres are rural and 75 kilometres are
urban. 602 kilometres of the road network is sealed, with 853
kilometres remaining unsealed to date.
Current desirable levels of service have been defined against
urban and rural road hierarchy categories. These are 6
carriageway service indicators (Quality, Safety, Environment,
Efficiency, Comfort/Convenience and capacity and 5 associated
roading asset service indicators (kerb and channel; bridges;
street lighting; road marking; and signs). The road hierarchy
established is designed to meet the expected levels of service
(as per the AMP), although incomplete inventory data for some
assets limits a full assessment. The levels of service defined in
the AMP inform the performance measures set out in this plan.
Plans for the future
The roading network uses a significant share of our annual
expenditure (almost 25%), and it is planned that this will continue
on a long term basis. Whereas the AMP provides important
information for the work programme, we also routinely monitor,
audit and assess, using traffic counts on a rotational basis to
collect data about trends. Hurunui is a large district with a small
population (rating base), therefore it is crucial that priority is
given to roads and bridges that serve important functions, such
as road safety, and have high traffic use.
NZTA have released indicative allocation budget figures for
road maintenance through 2012-2015, which are 5% less than
our original Regional Land Transport Programme submission
requests. Although these budget amounts are 3.4% more than
the 2009-2012 budget allocations, they equate to $226,000
less per annum across the three year programme. Coming to
grips with a total $1.6 million reduced budget is going to be
major challenge to both assets and operations alike. Our Asset
Management Plans (AMPs) tell us when, how and why we need
to do work on each of our roads to ensure maximum wholeof-life
for this asset (maximum return on investment approach);
but we do not have the required subsidised income to maintain
our roading network to the level our AMPs stipulate. We
will continue to retain our funding as previously indicated as
unsubsidised work and the rate impact for roading will continue
as previously stated in the plan. We have made the assumption
that the reduced level of NZTA funding will continue through
the life of the LTP.
We have done our best to get greater efficiencies within our
current road maintenance contracts, without affecting the
current levels of service (LoS). At the end of this period, our
maintenance contracts will be renewed with cost escalations
included. NZTA have declared that they will not pick up contract
price escalations through their road maintenance subsidy
scheme. This implies that the ratepayer will have to cover this
shortfall otherwise less and less will be physically spent on
maintenance outputs resulting in loss of road asset life and
potentially putting road’s lives at risk driving on a compromised
infrastructure. Thus, NZTA and Central Government are
imposing more and more responsibility upon the local ratepayer
to fund their roading infrastructure’s needs, unless the Minister
of Transport is lobbied by all affected stakeholders to reverse
this tactic and strategy.
The financial savings effected through the last road maintenance
tender round will sustain the infrastructure for the following
year (2012-2013), but after that, we will have to seriously
consider what elements of the planned works will have to be
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