Firefighters rescue people and property during flooding in Auckland's New Lynn on 29 January. Many roads across the region ground to a halt during recent flooding events, with some badly damaged. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Auckland Council is in talks with the government about moving some roads to safer ground, the supercity's deputy mayor says.
The government had committed $6 billion over four years to resilience projects, starting with the likes of a new drainage system on State Highway 1 near Auckland's Epsom.
The road was flooded and could not be driven on during the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods, and was a long-standing risk identified by Waka Kotahi.
But until recently, the transport agency did not factor climate change and resilience into its projects.
Waka Kotahi's National Resilience Programme Business Case from 2020 found 19 risks to the Auckland transport system.
"What's the definition of insanity? You do the same thing and expect a different result." Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson
Most of those were flood risks.
That included flooding on State Highway 1 at Epsom due to a poor drainage system, coastal inundation on SH1 north of the Harbour Bridge, and flooding risks on SH22 at the Whangapouri and Oira streams.
The most extreme risk to the Auckland network was that of a landslip under SH1, north of Albany.
"This is currently viewed as being one of the highest risks on the Auckland region system in terms of system vulnerability to loss of access and availability," the report said of this scenario.
The spot had: "Significant land instability issues, detected with ongoing movement since construction in late 90s as part of the SH1 Alpurt [Albany to Puhoi] A1 Project," it said.
Some of those risks were being fixed immediately as part of the government's resilience spend, while others would have to wait.
Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson said she welcomed the funding, and that the work needed to start yesterday.
Auckland deputy mayor Desley Simpson. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
"There are parts of the roading network in Auckland that will never be fixed because they're in the wrong place," Simpson said.
Auckland Council was working with Minister of Transport Michael Wood on an integrated transport plan which Simpson said could address some of the issues.
"What we have traditionally done is, we've had a dirt track which has become a road, which has become a field road, which has become a slightly widened road, but we've left it basically in the same place," Simpson said.
"Now I can think of an example in the Wairau Valley, for example, that you could build a stormwater tunnel as big as two football fields and it would still flood.
"[The integrated transport plan is] another helicopter view over the region to see whether, actually, we should reroute some of those main roads."
In the past, Waka Kotahi had invested in roads after weather-related outages without completing resilience work, knowing the exact same outage would occur the next time bad weather strikes.
Simpson said that kind of infrastructure planning had gone on long enough.
"What's the definition of insanity? You do the same thing and expect a different result," she said.
"We need to rethink that planning, and that is part of our resilience planning going forward.
"We cannot drop the ball now when it comes to storm and flood resilience and planning and implementation. This work needed to happen yesterday. It certainly needs to happen now, and we can't wait until tomorrow."
Simpson said investing in Auckland's infrastructure resilience would need to be a collective effort including the government, and she said talks were close to conclusion about how future funding would be split between central and local government.
"Normally when we do other roads we go 50/50 with central government.
"They have indicated that they'll put some more money aside to maybe pay 75 percent, and we're just negotiating what those projects and programmes will look like at the moment.
"So they've indicated that they will do a little bit more, but it's a hugely expensive fix. And we've got to start somewhere."