Some damaged Christchurch roads could remain rougher than they were before the Canterbury earthquakes for several decades.
Road cones on a truck in post-earthquake Christchurch. Photo: RNZ / Conan Young
The Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT), charged with fixing the city's quake-damaged roads, bridges and pipes, is expected to wind up permanently in March.
The combined local and central government initiative had a $2.2 billion budget to fix the infrastructure.
The council's city services manager, David Adamson, said the team had done the most urgent and significant roadworks but it was up to the council to finish the job.
Depending on what it can afford, the rest of the work could sit with the city for decades.
"An example would be roads would be slightly rougher than what they were."
Resident of the east Christchurch suburb of Parklands, Cecile Murphy, said the team wasn't given enough money to do all the work and the investment should have continued longer.
"But I'm hoping that over the years ... that things will come right," said Ms Murphy, a member of the Parklands Recovery Group.
Mr Adamason said the council would run a $450 million programme of ongoing repairs and maintenance to the infrastructure.
Since its inception in 2011, SCIRT has taken on more than 700 projects in Christchurch.
General manager Ian Campbell said it was due to finish in December but there were about 30 projects it had still wanted to finish.
"Partly because some of them are extra work we agreed to take on fairly late in the piece," he said
The government's end date for the rebuild as a whole is 2026.