AS I look out the window, there is a small patch of strange-looking colour in the sky. Blue – something most of us aren’t used to as the rain has hammered us week after week in the past month or so. December hasn’t been known for fine, dry weather in recent years. But even so, it’s outdone itself this year as heavy-bellied clouds have waddled their way across our skies before gleefully showing us the mains pressure attachment they’ve let loose with. It’s had its consequences, not the least has been the damage to our roads on a national basis. I can understand the issues with slips and the flooded fields, rivers and streams close to roads. It’s a never-ending nuisance rural folk have to put up with. In having said all that however, it was with some bemusement I read about folk north of Auckland having to stop their cars as the wheels fell off in the metaphorical sense and they had to stop their cars to divest the round things of layers of collected tar and chip seal. And the quote of the week had to be from a local trucking page this week that went along the lines of: “There is some good four bedroom, three bathroom potholes forming on Takitimu Drive heading towards Tauriko.’ Even here in the King Country, there are some atrocious potholes that have been forming for a while, not just in the past wet week or three. The Awakino Gorge is an area we know well, travelling the SH3 route a lot. Yet for all that it was completed in April this year, it still hasn’t actually been completed. It has been resealed “temporarily” several times over and is still in a 30km zone as we went through again on Sunday. New seal is now ruggedly patchy, peeled away, and completely missing in many places… and I have to ask – why? Why do we spend money on ‘temporary things’? Why are we not building roads to the same standards we were 30 or 40 years ago when things actually lasted? Was privatising roading contracting companies not the best thing to do after all? Because it is costing taxpayers/ratepayers horrendous amounts of money even to do these permanently “temporary” fixes, many of which are now becoming so bad they are a danger to the cars that are being driven on, around or through them. I strongly believe Waka Kotaki’s Zero Road Death’s campaign isn’t to do with bad drivers – the 80km/hr push is simply to lower the speed on roads no longer able to cope with 100km/hr – because the disrepeair of the roads themselves can’t cope with the current speed limits. So I have to ask – who’s at fault? Is it the engineers who design the things? So it’s like the leaky homes where no-one thought ever to blame the architects who designed the homes, but blamed the builders instead, or is it the road construction crews who could be using cheap products or cutting corners? All I know is, this is a national problem – and one that needs focusing on sooner rather than later. Because there will be roads causing deaths soon. Not drivers. So while you are out and about on them this silly season, take a bit of extra care. Especially in the wet weather. Your family, friends, loved ones – and your work colleagues, all want to see you back safe and well on the other side of New Year.
