EBus damage at $400k
A $400,000 plan to urgently fix roads damaged by Nelson’s new eBuses is to come before the council.
Tomorrow, the Nelson City Council will be asked to approve the funding for “urgent” remedial works to key bus routes and bus stops before the onset of winter.
In a report to go before the council, group infrastructure manager Alec Louverdis wrote that an “unforeseen outcome” of the roll-out of the eBus service and new bus routes had been that some road surface deterioration had occurred across the network.
The underlying cause was “poor pavement strength” on some roads, resulting in “seal cracking, heaves and potholes”.
Jenner Rd was a case in point, the report said, having suffered “major damage” before the route was retired and replaced. To date, $29,000 has been spent on repairs, but some permanent works are still to be undertaken.
While work is being done to repair road damage, particularly at various bus stops, additional funding is needed for this financial year, Louverdis said.
An estimated $400,000 was required to repair key sites to ensure they “withstand the challenges” of the colder and wetter months.
The situation was “not unique” to the region, as Louverdis said that the new eBuses were causing “similar issues across the country”.
The council is budgeting $70,000 for repairs on Main Rd, Stoke, to be carried out before the end of the financial year.
The road was showing signs of failure in seven locations, however, these spots couldn’t directly be attributed to the eBus, as the road had been a bus route for a long time and was used by many other heavy vehicles, Louverdis said.
Damage that the council has attributed to eBuses are the bus stop on Collingwood St next to 132 Health, which has been repaired, a patch on Tresillian Ave, and the corner of Washington Rd and Princes Drive, which has suffered kerb damage as the bus has travelled too close to the corner.
Repairs on Tresilian Ave are planned for June, and the council is still awaiting a date for repairs on Washington Ave.
While the cost of Collingwood St repairs came to $3830, the full cost of Jenner Rd repairs was $59,000.
Meanwhile, in Tasman, the district council has completed two repairs on sites damaged by eBuses, one on Queen St and one on Hill St, at a cost of $37,630.
The council is monitoring “several” other defects that appear to be related to the buses.
Tasman District Council transportation manager Jamie McPherson said some bus related damage was expected based on past experience, particularly at new bus stop locations where the edge of the road near the kerb had not had much heavy traffic previously.
However, the overall impact in terms of the council’s total sealed road maintenance programme was “minor”, he said.
The council had been experiencing “increasing deterioration” across its sealed road networks for many years now. Contributing reasons included less government road maintenance funding allocated to councils from the 2010s until 2021, and increased weight limits for trucks since 2010, he said. To address this “wider long-term deterioration”, increased investment in sealed road maintenance and renewals is proposed by the council, together with increased funding from central government.
The Tasman District Council’s annual expenditure on sealed road maintenance and renewals is in the order of $7 million at present. That figure is proposed to increase to $10m a year from 2024/2025.