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Close to an extra ten kilometres of footpaths will be upgraded by Auckland City Council this financial year as a result of further efficiencies and savings.
Last year council set itself a target to upgrade 185,000 square metres of footpath in the financial year for a total budget of $22.5m.
However it is now anticipated 204,000 square metres of footpath will be completed. That’s an extra 19,000 sq m, or 9.5 kilometres of additional footpaths.
At today’s Auckland City Council Transport Committee meeting, chair Ken Baguley said: “This excellent result is primarily due to savings generated from current contract.
For next year we have revised our targets further in an effort to deliver even more footpath improvements for Auckland suburbs. We aim to complete 214,000 square metres of footpath upgrades for the same $22.5m figure, which will be a great result for Auckland City Council and the new Auckland Transport Agency.”
6 Comments
This is not due to efficiences this is due to the current council lowering the required standard for new pavements. The previous standard was for footpaths to be able to last 50 years, the city rats under Banks dropped this down to 20-30 years. I.e. we get more because it’s being done cheaply and nastily.
And this Council has previously cut the footpath renewals budget.
Admittedly, they may have also lost some NZTA part-funding recently (motorway get the money these day instead of footpaths!) but yeah: there’s more than meets the eye here.
I doubt whether there is any NZTA subsidy for footpath renewals and how will the Government get their new super high speed broadband reticulated in the streets where the counil has installed wall to wall thick concrete. Cutting the concrete will be a huge cost - why not put in cabling now so that the cconcrete will not need to be ripped up?
George, under that logic, every work in this country would be held up until everyone else is “ready”. Auckland doesn’t have a magical day on which is upgrades all its footpaths - it’s a slow process. Broadband hasn’t been sorted all out yet - so should people who have waited for a long time now wait even longer?
Also, installation of fibre-optics need not cause footpaths to be cut open, and a good-quality footpath will probably see less permanent damage if it has to be cut open than one built at cut-rate quality.
Ingolfson - I think the issues is the lack of forward thinking and planning that is prevalent in NZ. Its not uncommon for a road/footpath to be upgraded and then a month after it is finished the process is repeated because another group needs to do work in the area. Laying a bit of conduit now could then be used in the future for a number of things with Fibre being only one of them.
Matt, what I was referring to is that in reality, there will always be such cases. “Not uncommon” can mean a lot of things, and even if you instead gave me a figure like “10% of all NZ footpaths get dug up again within 2 years” I would ask “And what is the figure in other countries?”
I work on a lot of projects where a lot of coordination DOES go on. Sometimes I want to scream at them to just DO it, rather than try to get EVERYTHING right, and wait another 5 months - or another 5 years, because suddenly the election or the financial recession or whatever stops everything.
I agree with you on the need for better coordination, but I also feel that these things are simply facts of life.