A potted history of roading

By Peter Carr

Travelling north back towards Cambridge at the weekend my front left wheel slammed into a huge pothole just south of Turangi.

My (earlier) maritime background has fitted me for suitable voluble expletives for such unplanned occurrences – luckily my longsuffering wife has heard them all before.

But this is the main backbone infrastructure of the country - so why are we accepting such poor performance by our professional roading body and their contractors? Why is it that this crater almost cost me a very expensive front tyre? Why should I be complacent and just accept that we are living in (almost) third world conditions despite paying heavy roading taxes through the petrol pump or road user charges for diesel?

You have every tight to chastise me when comparing my incursion into road rage language when set alongside the appalling state of the roads in Northland and on the East Cape. There, frequent large slips and attendant weeks of clearing-up delay far outweigh my discomfort.

Now call me churlish if you will. But either we have first class roading engineers (Transmission Gully says it is so as I drove that over the recent weekend) or we do not.

But potholes, slips and a make-do-andmend mentality abounds. Roads have for 150 years been supported by a ‘she’ll be right’ approach by successive governments afraid to address the big picture.

To the good people of Ruatoria or Wairoa their road is just as important as Transmission Gully. It is their right as taxpayers to expect the same level of smooth tarmac, roadside barriers and relatively high-speed rules as those who experience the Waikato Expressway.