Cyclists between Whakatāne and Piripai will have to wait, possibly for years, for a new shared use path along Keepa Road.

Whakatāne District Council has instructed staff not to budget any funding in its Annual Plan 2025-2026, to carry out work over and above what it does on its other paths.

The bumpy 2km path connecting walkers and cyclists from Whakatāne to beachside subdivision Coastlands has been the subject of multiple complaints to council over several years.

Piripai cyclist Harry Austin said the decision was disappointing.

“We should be trying to encourage people to get out of petrol and diesel driven cars and get on their bicycles, which is a lot healthier.”

He said crossing the bridge was another obstacle for some cyclists.

“Cycling across the Landing Road Bridge is quite hair-raising. It’s pretty narrow to be used as a cycle track.”

He believed the path would slowly get worse and said repairs in the past had been done poorly.

Elected members had asked staff to provide some costings for options to upgrade or repair the path, which were presented to them at a recent briefing.

Staff recommended carrying out reactive maintenance and renewals only and to set no extra budget for replacement of the path until the council had a better understanding of the direction for the currently stalled Te Rāhui Herenga Waka Whakatāne Boat Harbour project on Keepa Road.

Transport manager Ann-Elise Reynolds said renewal of the path had been budgeted for in a previous long-term plan, but when the boat harbour proposal came about, it was put on hold.

It was included in a larger project to widen the road to support increased traffic to the boat harbour.

“Rather than upgrade the path in isolation from that project it was brought into the wider Keepa Road improvement project.”

That project did not receive the funding that council had sought from New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi in its three-year funding round announced last year. The boat harbour project is also on hold currently awaiting plans for a rescoped project able to be delivered within the original budget set in 2019.

Reynold said once that was settled the council could reconsider what would happen with Keepa Road.

“One option could be to only do the path rather than the road.”

Council staff provided elected members with a list of other options for the shared use path ranging from $185,000 to make minor repairs to $2 million for a new three-metre wide concrete path.

Mayor Victor Luca said he felt the estimated cost for minor repairs to be high.

“Let’s just do some reactive maintenance on it - not just say that we’re going to do it.”

Reynolds said the council ran three-yearly surveys of all shared use paths and cycle paths throughout the district grading them from one to five, which was used to prioritise maintenance along with other factors such as traffic levels.

“We will be looking at the Keepa Road shared use path under the same lens as all the other ones.”

Deputy mayor Lesley Immink said she often spoke to groups of very enthusiastic cyclists who had been waiting many years for the new path.

“The lament is the quality of the fix ups,” she said.

She asked that any maintenance done on the path be monitored for quality.

Luca agreed.

“When they finally did throw some tarseal in some of those potholes I don’t even think they banged it down.”

Elected members agreed rates increases the community was facing made it the wrong time to budget extra funding to the path.

“I know it’s not great and I’ve complained about it a lot myself, but it is useable,” Luca said.

“When times are tough - and I think the waters are looking pretty choppy going forward as well - we maybe need to put some things on hold.”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.