The perilous state of the Far North's roads

Sharon Brettkelly is hitting the broken tar seal across the Far North to see just how bad the damage to the region's roads is.

There's no dodging the Far North's broken roads for the 73,000 people who live there, or the visitors who venture there.

After a decade of neglect, the potholed, crumbling, slumping 2,700 kilometre network is described as a "crisis" by one local leader.

Others say it's pushing up the price of freighting local produce and putting off investors. But worse still is the effect on people needing specialist treatment in Whangārei.

The problem is exacerbated by the partial closure of State Highway 1 through the Mangamuka Gorge. It was closed last August and is not expected to reopen until next May as Waka Kotahi works through $100 million worth of repairs on 15 major slips. 

All traffic now has to go through SH10 on the eastern side of the region, or SH16 on the west.

"It's a crisis that took a long time to develop," says Joe Carr, chairman of the Northland Regional Transport committee. 

Cyclone Gabrielle and incessant winter rain have created a perfect storm this year, he says, but the roads have suffered from under-investment for more than a decade. And he says money set aside for roading has gone on expensive projects in cities.

"We're feeling pretty wounded up here," says Carr.

"The roads are shocking, they're hammering the trucks," says logging truck driver Andre Sigglekow. "We're snapping, breaking stuff on our trucks all the time."

He stops to talk to The Detail while carting logs from a forest near Mangamuka to a mill in Kaitaia. The closure of the direct route through SH1 has nearly doubled his journey time.

And the roads themselves are not easy.

"The old trailer gets whipped around because of all the bumps," says Sigglekow.

"It's not only about our roadworthiness, but it's about the resilience of the economy," says Penetaui Kleskovic, Far North District Councillor and operations manager of the commercial arm of the Northland iwi Te Aupōuri. 

"Moana Pacific is one of the companies that we have a share in and they operate out of Whangaroa. In Shanghai, the prices for a dozen oysters can fetch up to $35, but you can't realise that economic upside because by the time your oysters actually arrive there, they look like they've gone through the NutriBullet."

Restrictions on the amount trucks are allowed to carry on the local roads, due to the closure of SH1, are driving up the cost of freight, Kaitaia business consultant Hirikia Murray says. 

"If we were to cart a 40-foot shipping container of product to the Ports of Auckland for exporting, we would have to stay within 20 tonne (per truck). In the Auckland area we could get up to 36 tonne in a shipping container," says Murray.

Te Rūnanga o Te Rarawa trust investment manager Cale Silich says the region, which depends heavily on primary product that needs good roads, is missing out on investment. 

"Given the sector is entirely reliant on supply chain resilience and the like, it makes it difficult for us to make decisions that we are comfortable with in the short term around investments that would have looked otherwise very attractive.

"What I want to happen is for those who have been responsible for the historic under-investment in not only critical infrastructure but our locality here, our economies, and its people, put their hands up and take responsibility for that and help us get out of this."

The Far North has the second-longest roading network in the country, behind Southland, and a relatively small population, says Carr.

"A relatively low population, high length of road, huge DOC estates, that makes the roading network that goes around them more extensive," he says.

"We've got lots of issues about uncollected rates, we've got problems such as distribution of quarries' aggregate. You cart more than 10 kilometres from a quarry, it's damn expensive."

Hear more about the state of the roads in the Far North in the full podcast episode.

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