Central Hawke’s Bay mayor Will Foley wants a standardised approach to bridge building in New Zealand and says it could save councils millions of dollars without compromising safety or quality.
By Linda Hall for Local Democracy Reporting
Foley has written to Minister of Transport Chris Bishop, NZTA and transport spokespeople across the political spectrum.
Foley says in his letter he wants central and local government to explore a national bridge programme for designing, procuring and delivering bridges across state highways and local roads.
He said the programme could save millions of dollars for New Zealand over the next 30 years.
“It would include modular components, instead of the current approach where each bridge has a bespoke design.”
He said it was a huge opportunity for New Zealand.
“We know NZTA is considering a similar approach for state highways - I’m asking that local government and local roads are included so that we can benefit from the efficiency gains,” Foley says.
Hawke’s Bay officials call for a standard approach to replacing vulnerable infrastructure. (Source: 1News)
An NZTA spokesman said they were committed to delivering the best value-for-money infrastructure projects.
“That includes looking at ways to reduce the cost of consenting, designing and building its bridges around the country,” the spokesman said.
They said while not every bridge was suitable for standardisation, they were investigating opportunities to improve the process of replacing bridges approaching the end of their working life.
“That includes talking to suppliers, reviewing international examples, and developing an approach to work with local councils on ways these changes could eventually be applied to local roading infrastructure – not just state highways,” the spokesman said.
Foley said his council didn’t have an “endless supply of money” to rebuild bridges.
“These bridges keep us connected, and provide resilience for our rural producers who are the backbone of New Zealand’s export economy. We need to provide councils with the tools to succeed,” he said.
He said most of the bridge network across the country was ageing and required significant repairs or replacement.
“This is our call to Government and NZTA, to decision makers, and councils.
“We need to serve our ratepayers as best as we can. We know their wallets are hurting, so we have to come up with ways to help them better, smarter, and for less money.
“Any time you look at the news, you will see a council unable to keep up with the increasing costs to keep the roads up to scratch.
“We can either accept what is happening and have substandard road infrastructure, or we can be smarter about what we’re doing.
“This is a huge opportunity.”
Foley said an example was a recent structural assessment on Central Hawke’s Bay’s Pettit Valley Bridge, which found it would cost about $3.5 million to replace it.
He said the advice to council was to adopt an international best-practice approach, using standardised and modular designs and components, which could save 20-30%, or about $1 million.
The council maintains 170 bridges and more than 1200km of roads, with only 8563 ratepayers to fund maintenance, repairs or rebuilds.
Foley said a 30% saving across most of the country’s bridge-building projects was “an opportunity that we can’t walk past”.
The council recently faced community pushback regarding the estimated cost to replace the cyclone-damaged Burnside Bridge in Takapau.
Initial costs to repair the one-lane bridge over the Mākaretū River were $16m for two lanes or $9m for one lane.
NZTA declined to co-fund the work because of the bridge’s low traffic volumes and relatively short 5km detour. With only around $560,000 of recovery funding available, the council initially moved towards demolishing the bridge.
A local then approached BridgeIT, which initially indicated it could replace the bridge for $2.75 million.
The estimate was later withdrawn by BridgeIT’s NZ director as inaccurate.
In August, councillors voted 6–3 to spend $100,000 on technical, economic and funding investigations into repair of the bridge. It remains closed.
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
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