Simeon Brown: Transport Minister on the government's new pothole fund

The Government will spend $4 billion over the next three years fixing and preventing potholes on state highways and local roads nationwide.  

Auckland will get a $478 million boost in pothole funding; Waikato will get $214m and Canterbury has been allocated $187m in funding. 

Transport Minister Simeon Brown told Jack Tame “The real focus here is preventing them.” 

Brown said “The NZTA board allocates the fund based upon need.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The pothole Police is coming to a place near you.
That's the promise from the Transport Minister today. Simon Brown
says almost four billion dollars in total will be spent
on pothole prevention and repair on state highways and local
roads over the next three years. The biggest local roads
winners by region are Auckland almost half a billion dollars alone,
Why Cut on more than two hundred million, Canterbury one

(00:21):
hundred and eighty eight million, in Northland on one hundred
and fifty million. Simon Brown is the Transport Minister and
as with us this evening, Good evening Minister.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good evening, Jack.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
So what is the money actually going to be spent on.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, this is the pothole Prevention Fund, so it's going
to go into those activities focused on preventing potholes from
per forming in the first place. That's resealing the road,
it's rehabilitating it, which means digging it up and renewing
the pavement, and it's the important drainage work that's required
along the sides of the roads to stop water getting
into the roading surface and causing potholes to form. So

(00:55):
this is about preventing potholes. It's about resealing the roads.
It's about making sure that we can get care He
was where they need to go quickly and safely.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
To be totally clear, is it also about repairing the potholes.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Well, look absolutely, but the real focus here is preventing
them oftenly. That's what we need to be doing, is
preventing them. That's the resealing of the roads, rehabilitating them. Yes,
we do also need to make sure when potholes do
form that we get out there quickly and also make
sure that they are repaired in a timely fashion to
keep motorists safe on the roads. But the real focus
here is on those really core activities which we want

(01:29):
MZTA and local councils focused on, which is resealing, rehabilitating
and getting that water out of the roads by investing
in the drainage to protect that asset and keep New
Zealander safe on the road.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I think everyone can see that it makes a
lot of sense to actually invest in the things that
prevent from the potholes from forming in the first place.
So last year you reckon sixty two thousand potholes. New
Zealand had our highest number in ten years. How do
they work that out?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, that was how many were recorded by nztas needing
to be repaired on the on the state highway network
last year, so their contractors are obviously out there all
the time fixing the roads and getting fixing potholes as
quickly as they can. That was a record number last
year and that shows that the fact is that we've
got a growing number of potholes on the road, which
means we're not doing a good enough job of actually resealing,

(02:14):
rehabilitating and doing the drainage work to prevent them fromforming
in the first place. So that's why the focus here
is ring fencing this fund into those activities which prevent
those potholes performing and to make sure our roads are
safe to drive on.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
So what information informed decisions around which regions got the
biggest increase in their allocated funding.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Well, ultimately the New Zealand Transport Agencies Board makes these decisions.
They are responsible for looking at the asset management plans
that councils and the agency puts forward and working out
where the need is and then allocating the funds according
to that need. So that's the agency's board. They look
through the asset management plans, they test that, they look
at what's been required in the past, what the issues

(02:56):
are that are happening, and then they make those allocations
based on that evidence.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
So describe to us the state of New Zealand's roads
three years from now.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, ultimately it's about making sure we've got a greater
number of kilometers of road being resealed each year and
rehabilitated each year, more investment in the drainage which will
see a reduction in the number of potholes on our roads,
safer to drive on, and ultimately it's about good asset management.
That's what it comes down to. We haven't been doing
good asset management in recent years. We've taken the eye
off the ball and it's about making sure there's a

(03:25):
clear pipeline for agency and local counts to invest in
their core business of protecting that asset and making sure
it's safe to drive on for New Zealanders.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Thanks for your time this evening, We appreciate it, Transport
Minister Simeon Brown.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
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