Lucky streets have better footpaths than poorer areas
Palmerston North’s worst footpaths are clustered in poorer areas of the city, to the frustration of city councillors who field frequent complaints about bumpy surfaces and trip hazards.
A map of the worst-known faults presented to the council’s infrastructure committee showed parts of Roslyn, West End and Awapuni had more than their share of the 3.5% of footpaths in poor or very poor condition out of the city’s 565km network of paths.
Cr Lew Findlay said he had not noticed many $1m homes in those areas.
Cr Brent Barrett said the pattern of inequity was ‘‘absolutely disturbing’’. ‘‘Some parts of the city are as clean as a whistle. Others are a train wreck.’’
Staff said some 277 pieces of footpath had been repaired this financial year, since July 2021, despite new contractor Fulton Hogan’s crews having been affected by last year’s Covid-19 lockdown and isolation rules.
About $667,000 was planned to be spent on repairs and renewals in the year, and to the end of April, less than half had been done.
A 2020 survey identified there were 7506 individual faults that needed to be fixed.
Staff records showed the number of complaints about footpath conditions had dropped from a yearly average of 427 down to 326 last year.
Cr Lorna Johnson said she was perturbed that despite increased budgets, the length of footpaths graded as poor or very poor was only 500m shorter than it was four years ago.
‘‘It’s something we are judged on by members of the public, and rightly so. I can’t believe it is as difficult as it is to get on top of.’’
Chief infrastructure officer Sarah Sinclair said it was clear the council and contractors had not been able to improve levels of service.
She said the current focus was on identifying stretches of footpath longer than 5m that needed rebuilding rather than maintenance, to correct the underlying faults causing frequent and repeating smaller faults.
Those renewals would be more expensive, but would reduce the numbers of small faults and complaints in time, she said.
Cr Susan Baty said more money would be needed to match the rate of inflation.