By Libby Kirkby-McLeod of RNZ

“Bloody minded road vandalism.” That’s how many residents in Pāpāmoa have reacted to news their previously asphalted roads are going to be resurfaced in chip seal.

Residents said they would rather their streets had no resealing work and were left as they were.

However, Tauranga City Council said roads were only scheduled for resealing if they were showing early signs of surface deterioration and leaving a road to deteriorate further would result in higher costs.

In October, RNZ reported on the surprise many residents had when their roads were resealed with a different surface and a general public preference for asphalt.

Pāpāmoa Residents and Ratepayers Association chairman Philip Brown said residents of Santa Monica Drive, Montego Drive, Santa Barbara Drive, Checketts Place, Sovereign Drive and The Gardens Drive were not consulted by the council before discovering their roads were to be resealed this summer. All the roads were going from asphalt to chip seal.

He said the residents did not think there was a need for the resealing to happen at all.

“There is nothing wrong with the roads as they are now,” he said. “They look good, they are quiet, they are just nice stable roads, there are no engineering problems with them, council has never produced an engineering document saying that the roads are having a problem and they are just that well-built .”

Brown said the council should save money and just leave the roads alone.

“We cannot understand why they want to do the chip sealing.”

Tauranga City Council general manager of operations and infrastructure Reneke van Soest said each road was individually inspected before going on the maintenance schedule.

Van Soest said that depending on the condition of each individual site it might be possible to delay treatment for one or two years, but the Pāpāmoa sites that had been selected for resealing were showing early signs of failure.

“If we do not address that deterioration, we risk significant damage to the structural layers beneath the road surface, which would result in greater repair costs and inconvenience for everyone,” she said.

The council said the most cost-effective way of maintaining a road was to intervene before potholes, cracking and other quality issues occur.

“So that we can prevent damage to the underlying road layers. [Road] repairs or rehabilitation are much more expensive maintenance processes, which can be managed by timely resurfacing to waterproof the road foundations,” van Soest said.

One of the issues was that Tauranga had many roads in residential areas that were surfaced in asphalt by subdivision developers. Developers likely know that people prefer asphalt which would be a motivation for using it.

“Those roads are progressively reaching the end of their serviceable surface life and maintenance is becoming a priority,” van Soest said.

The New Zealand Transport Agency funds 51% of local roads but for NZTA to co-fund resurfacing in asphalt, councils must show NZTA that asphalt was worth the investment as it was five times more expensive. This case was often unable to be made for suburban streets and so council would have to fund 100% of the road renewal if it went with asphalt.

“Using the example of Santa Monica Drive, the cost difference between chip seal and asphalt is almost $400,000.

“If that additional cost is divided by the number of households served by the road, resurfacing with asphalt would require each household to contribute approximately $3000 to make up the funding shortfall,” van Soest said.

The Pāpāmoa Residents and Ratepayers Association had started a survey online of residents and Brown showed some of the feedback to RNZ. It was overwhelmingly against the resealing work.

One resident who had lived on the street for 20 years said they had already written to the council regarding the matter.

“There is nothing wrong with the road, there are far more urgent road resurfacing works that need doing!”

Another questioned how it would affect their children.

“My kids enjoy riding their scooters on our street and have recently purchased a skateboard too. If the street is covered with chipseal then they will lose this area to play outside.”

“I feel that the footpaths need more urgent attention than the road surface,” said one resident.

Brown said asphalt lasted longer so the cost may even out over time. He thought it would last 30-plus years.

NZTA told RNZ the longevity of asphalt was dependent on a range of factors, for example heavy trucks and electric buses would wear the surface much faster than a light vehicle. However, generally they would expect it to last for approximately 12 years.

Brown said the association had reached out to council to ask them to hold a community meeting next week to work through the issues.

“Continuing on regardless would show a lack of care for the community.”

-RNZ