The wettest winter ever has wreaked havoc on the country's roads and it's expected it will cost more than $80 million to fix the nation's state highways.
State highways in Northland, Gisborne, Central Waikato, Nelson/Marlborough and Wellington have all suffered significant damage recently.
Waka Kotahi's general manager of transport services Brett Gliddon said the issues are widespread.
"There's been a huge amount of damage and that just comes from a huge amount of rain and really intense rain at a certain point in time."
In addition to the repairs needed on the state highways, 36 councils have also applied for funding to repair local roads that were damaged over winter. So far more than $36 million has been paid out.
In Nelson and Marlborough, which were worst hit by August's storm, the damage is still being assessed.
Marlborough Roads manager Steve Murrin says the initial focus has been restoring access, where possible.
"At the moment we've got quite a team trying to build up how many faults are out there. At last count it was over 3800," Murrin said.
It's estimated it could cost hundreds of millions of dollars to fix Marlborough's roads. The region was still dealing with the effects of a storm last July.
Murrin said even now the earth is still moving.
"My wife loves going to bed while it's raining. I go to bed and stay awake all night. Because you don't know what you're going to get out of it."
Aside from the damage done by the recent storms, there's ongoing concern about road maintenance across the country.
AA's road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen said the public is noticing the issues.
"We get messages frequently from people saying the roads have never been this bad."
He said it comes down to underinvestment over several years.
"For a decade or more we haven't been spending the money for that preventative maintenance work. The potholes are a symptom of that lack of maintenance."
Brett Gliddon agrees there is an issue.
"We've got a lot of potholes, more than we would normally have. The condition is not as good as it normally is and it's not where we want it to be."
He said a huge summer of repairs is being planned but admits the transport agency is hamstrung.
"We're always constrained from funding. We would love more money, more money we could do more," Gliddon said.
Transport Minister Michael Wood said the government was looking at the next three years of funding.
"We have been putting more investment in...and we'll continue to put the investment that we need to to ensure we have a resilient network in face of these challenges."
One of the biggest challenges is climate change, which is expected to bring more storms like we've seen this winter.
Brett Gliddon said in the future it's possible some roads won't be repaired when they're damaged.
"At the moment we're not there yet at the moment we're still reinstating the roads that are damaged but I think it's just about thinking about how we deal with these events in a different way," Gliddon said.
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