Revealed: Roadworks firing us up

NZTA complaint figures show Waikato drivers most put out and Southland least

Commuters in the Waikato aren’t afraid to whinge when they’ve had a gutsful with roadworks. The New Zealand Transport Agency has shared which areas around the country draw the most complaints related to roadworks.

Road disgruntlement is most rampant in the Waikato, according to data provided to the Herald through the Official Information Act.

NZTA received 302 complaints related to roadworks from 2013 to November 2016.

Of that number, 68 were lodged regarding roadworks in the Waikato.

The information also shows the reasons, with most people concerned about traffic and maintenance.

The area’s major transport project has been the Waikato Expressway, which began in 2009 and is scheduled to be completed in 2019.

The project has an estimated cost of over $100 million according to NZTA, and aims to reduce travel time and congestion on State Highway 1, creating a four-lane highway from the Bombay Hills to Cambridge.

The region with the next highest number of complaints to NZTA was Northland, with 58 made since 2013.

Bugbears for road users in the north are debris being left on the road and congestion issues, although over half of the complaints were left blank without a specific designation.

Some of New Zealand’s happiest motorists appear to be in the Nelson/ Tasman area, with only two complaints related to roadworks being recorded in the past three years by NZTA. But Gisborne and Southland had the fewest complaints — only one in each area.

In the nation’s biggest city, the bulk of complaints were made in 2015, with 26 of the 37 received since June 2013 coming in that year.

Other peaks across the country included complaints for roadworks-related noise in the Bay of Plenty in 2014 and worksite complaints in Taranaki in 2015.

Automobile Association principal adviser Barney Irvine told the Herald his organisation receives a number of complaints from drivers.

“I think the main one is the perception that roadworks signs . . . are up but no work seems to be going on, and that could be because the job is finished or on hold,” he said.

“We come across complaints about timing — ‘why are you guys doing this right in the middle of the holiday period?’, or timing in the sense of time it takes to do a particular project.”

Irvine said drivers are also concerned about loose stone chips that can cause damage to their cars.

“And sometimes people complain about what seem to be over-the-top speed restrictions.”

The AA investigated the causes of congestion earlier this year.

“Certainly Wellington and Christchurch roadworks were seen by our members as a major cause of congestion in both,” Irvine said.

“In Wellington it was the sense that . . . these roadworks were taking place all at once along key routes.

“I think a really important issue is that road maintenance work can only be done in the summer months ... and that’s because of rainfall and also because of temperature . . . you’re really bound and constrained by the weather.

“That is inevitably going to clash with a lot of summer journeys,” he said.

The NZTA statistics covered all of New Zealand’s state highway network, but excluded complaints received directly by individual projects, by the Auckland Motorway Alliance, relating to local roads or those received through social media channels.