Footpaths: The good, the bad and the ugly
FROM
PAGE B1 roadways are made of asphalt or concrete. The former has a useful life of about 20 years before they start to deteriorate and need to be replaced. Concrete has a longer serviceable life of about 50 years.
When a new suburb is being constructed the council will use concrete. But when replacing a footpath they will do like-for-like.
Another big problem are tree roots – it’s trees with shallow roots that cause the most disturbance to paths.
‘‘What we try and do with existing trees when we are doing maintenance is we may look to remove some of the tree roots without killing the tree. So we get our arborist to come and have a look at what we can do.
‘‘Sometimes we have to remove the tree and when that happens our parks and open spaces team have a tree replanting programme. They will replace street trees with ones that have a deep root system so that we don’t continue to have these problems,’’ Harrison said.
The council just don’t stumble onto troublesome footpaths.
They have two people who survey the city’s footpaths twice a year. They prioritise them into how they are to be treated. Harrison emphasises that safety is always first and they welcome tips from the public about where to look.
‘‘When we do get a call from the public we will go and inspect them, we do inspect every fault that is rung in.
‘‘Our team will then make an assessment, if it is a safety issue they will look to programme it straight away or if the footpath is deteriorating. But it’s not unsafe then they will make a decision if it is part of the renewal programme or can it be done in the coming months.
He tries to get the footpath maintenance team working in blocks so they’re in one area moving around the city rather than jumping all over the city. It makes it more efficient in terms of their time and resources to get more work done across the city.
But this policy hasn’t been working for Glenview resident Jamie Hansen.
He braves the rain on Monday in his jandals to show off the poor condition of the footpath in Manapouri Place.
The 33-year-old has been renting his Glenview house for the past decade and for the same amount of time has been complaining about the state of the footpath.
‘‘We don’t have a lot of traffic but I think Glenview is the forgotten suburb of Hamilton.’’
It is a quiet cul de sac – but he said that his neighbours are either elderly or have young kids that enjoy playing outside.
‘‘I clean the slime off my footpath and my elderly neighbour’s footpath every few days – I wouldn’t want her to slip over and break a hip or anything,’’
The footpath is crumbling away in patches there’s a large hump just at his property’s edge that has been marked by the council the previous Friday – obviously earmarked for some type of work.
‘‘My concern is that with the slime and the potholes it won’t be long before someone falls over and does serious damage,’’ says Hansen.
‘‘With the kids in the street, a disabled boy on our street who likes to get out and have walkarounds with his mum it won’t be long before something happens I don’t think,’’ Hansen says.
By midday the rain has eased to take a trip to Sillary Street in Hamilton East.
Dianne Roach has owned her house for the past 14 years. She’s just a hop, skip and jump from the new underpass that connects pedestrians from Hamilton East to the Hamilton Gardens.
And while her street isn’t too
Glenview resident Jamie Hansen badly off, the active 61-year-old gardener specifies that she uses the city’s footpaths to get to places, as opposed to using them for exercise.
The little pocket rocket walks about two to three times a week and has noticed the deterioration of footpaths.
‘‘The footpaths aren’t just for those who are exercising, it’s for mothers, it’s for children – they need to get out – they’re not in large areas of land like I grew up with.
‘‘Mothers and fathers, caregivers need to say let’s go for a walk and know that they’re not going to trip up or the pram isn’t going to go lurching into the sky, they need to be able to go for a safe walk.’’
Roach questions if the council’s budget for overall maintenance has been mismanaged and if so there needs to be some accountability.
‘‘I would like to how much is setaside for footpaths. If there is already money being put aside then we need to look at where is it being put.
‘‘You can’t just say we need more money, there might be enough already allocated but maybe it’s not being used as wisely as it should maybe it’s going to other areas that might have been prioritised.’’
Roach will get the answers she’s after when the 10-year Plan is signed off at the end of June.
The footpath coffers are poised to look a lot healthier in the next financial year.
In 2018/19 the allocation is set to rise to $5.1m – more than doubling the past year – this has come as part of the 10-Year Plan.
Harrison said that this will mean that his team can plan to renew sections of footpath on 80 roads, covering around 17km.
They also hope to expand in July a new initiative that they’ve been trailing in Chartwell and Fairfield.
‘‘We’ve got a person on a moped doing who is doing the visual inspections – but there are also sensors on the moped to check the ridability of the footpath.
‘‘It has been quite successful in terms of the information provided. As of next month, we are looking to use the moped to do the whole city which would allow us to do the entire city in three to four months,’’ Harrison said.
Back in Fairfield, Jamieson puts on some jandals and takes a wander out his front gate.
He surveys the black asphalt again – the footpath hump hasn’t erupted yet – he just hopes something is done before it does.