Seeing ‘‘a perfectly good road’’ get resealed has left one Waipahi resident puzzled.
Workers spent last week resealing a section of State Highway 1 in Waipahi.
However, Alastair Sell said they would have been better off taking their gear across the Otago-Southland border further towards Gore where the road was actually damaged.
‘‘It is absolutely one piece of road that the whole thing needs done. They’ve done repairs on it and [the seal] just keeps lifting.’’
When he passed some roading trucks last Tuesday on his way to Gore, he was optimistic.
‘‘I thought ‘oh, this is good, we’re finally going to get some work done on the road’.’’
On his way home, he was disappointed to find they were working on a different piece of road in Waipahi that did not even need fixing, he said.
‘‘They should know that repairs are more important than something scheduled that doesn’t need done.’’
Senior network manager for the Coastal Otago Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency highway maintenance team, Chris Harris, said the work was scheduled routine summer highway maintenance.
‘‘There may be some patches of highway which require repairs short-term as well, but that doesn’t mean the scheduled work is paused or stopped given the amount of machinery, plant and materials [and] people required for these projects.’’
There was also temporary traffic management which needed approval in advance.
How often a road needed resealing was determined by range of factors such as traffic loading and stress, environmental factors and polishing of the stone, Mr Harris said.
‘‘Chipseal can last anywhere between four to 20-plus years depending on the above, but typically around 10 years on average for Coastal Otago, as we have lower volumes of traffic on parts of the network such as SH83, SH85 and SH87.’’
