Are road works in New Zealand really as slow as they seem?

On occasion columnists are forced to stray into areas about which they know nothing. This is one of those occasions. I am not broaching this subject only because news is slow and there is little to opine on.

I’m inviting people to put me straight in the hope that widespread frustrations will be soothed by information and explanation.

The subject is, of course, road works in New Zealand. My impression is that we are perhaps the slowest builders or repairers of roads in the world.

Everyone has their horror story – a road being dug up weeks after being resealed, shops nearly going out of business because of endless road works, and works left for weeks without action.

But let’s be fair to contractors. I imagine road repairs and builds are a minefield of complications and hidden problems.

Often problems aren’t encountered until the digging starts, and I bet pipes and services are never where they are meant to be.

Managing traffic on busy thoroughfares must be a nightmare and councils and other clients will always be expecting a bargain.

Getting good staff must be a perennial problem as the work is physical, often dirty and exposed to the elements.

Gear failures can stop jobs for days, and every job will throw up some unexpected requirements like bank stabilisation.

Work is done under the public eye and anyone who leans on their shovel is a loafer, even if the critic then drives to their office job and spends the first hour having coffee and trawling the internet.

And maybe, building new stretches of road or doing things like resealing or straightening corners is inherently timeconsuming and full of complex challenges poorly understood by the public.

Road repairers and builders will also rightly point out that the motoring public tends to concentrate on projects that appear to be taking a long time and forgets all the efficient jobs, the terrible conditions, the night work and the ever-present danger.

Two amazing projects spring to mind.

The Otira viaduct is a splendid feat of engineering and worker determination, and the new highway north and south of Kaiko¯ ura, built after the earthquake in 2016, is another marvel.

But for every Otira viaduct, there is a still unfinished Transmission Gully, on which work started in 2014.

One thing we must remember is road works have never been better funded or more visible. In an effort to stimulate the economy and improve infrastructure, the Government is pouring billions into roads under various programmes.

Roading contractors have never had it so good. Perhaps frustrations have increased simply because there are more road works.

Thanks to the road cone and the traffic management industry, works are well advertised many kilometres before any work is evident. New Zealand used to be known as a country where sheep outnumbered people by a ridiculous amount. Those sheep have mostly gone but could it be New Zealand regularly sets a world record number for cones per person?

Even after making all these allowances, road works in this country seem to take an awfully long time. I base that conclusion on years of experience but lately it appears to have got worse. Two recent observations brought the point home.

Wouldn’t every available worker be on the job, even if it took generous bonuses and other incentives?

In Auckland over Christmas I drove over the harbour bridge multiple times. Fortunately Auckland is pretty quiet over the holiday season, but there were several traffic jams. Two lanes on the east of the bridge were closed for remedial work.

Christmas is obviously an opportune time to work on a busy road, but I counted about five workers on the whole stretch of road with only one or two doing anything. Now this is one of the country’s busiest routes. Wouldn’t every available worker be on the job, even if it took generous bonuses and other incentives?

Closer to home, work has started on a crucial road through the Port Hills connecting Banks Peninsula and Christchurch. It’s not Auckland, but the delays are a major loss of time for thousands of motorists each day.

Apart from the traffic controllers, I haven’t seen much actual road work going on. Very little progress appears to have been made and the works are scheduled to go until June. No work is done during weekends or at night, but the cones stay out regardless.

Before you start calling me a capitalist snob with no sympathy for the common worker, I need to remind everyone that Christchurch has had 10 years of this. We have grown inured to inconvenience and seemingly endless road works. So things have to be pretty bad for us to notice.

I suspect this is going on all over the country. Are contractors taking us for a ride, or is everyone doing their best under difficult conditions? You tell me.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.