Road Seal Downgrading Continues

John Gillon from John Gillon - Kaipatiki Local Board

Road Seal Downgrading Continues:
I've been fielding a number of queries about recent road resealing work around the area. A number of roads have been downgraded from smooth-seal (hotmix) to chip-seal without prior warning. You can see in the attached example letter, that while residents were told that their road would be resealed, they were not told that it would be changed to chip-seal. And because Auckland Transport use a smaller, poorer grade of stone than North Shore City used to use for chip-seal, the stones travel a long way, go up driveways, damage cars, etc. I went to see the new road seal at the end of Chelsea View Drive today, and saw that the stones have travelled right back to Mokoia Road. In some parts of Kaipatiki, the new chip-seal has required multiple "sweeps" to remove the excess stones, sometimes for up to a year afterwards.
So why is this happening? Unfortunately in the drive to lower costs, since 2014/2015, Auckland Transport has been downgrading all roads that carry less than 10,000 vehicles a day to chip-seal, which is virtually all suburban roads. If you aren't on a main road, and you still have smooth-seal, it will likley be changed when it is next due to be resealed.

This was AT's statement to me back in 2015 and nothing has changed:
"It is Auckland Transport’s Policy that Chip seal surfacing must be used for resealing, except for roads which satisfy specific criteria, in which case asphaltic concrete surfacing must be used. For example asphaltic concrete surfacing must be used for resealing roads where the volume of traffic exceeds 10,000 vehicles per day, that are subject to high wear and tear (such as most cul-de-sac heads, roundabouts, sharp bends with severe flushing, stripping or skid resistance, aprons/main road intersections), in industrial/commercial areas where there is a high concentration of truck traffic, or that are subject to high usage by pedestrians, such as town centres, hospitals, shopping centres and schools.
All other road surfaces should be resealed with chip seal. In practise, this means that a low vehicle volume residential street that was previously sealed with asphaltic concrete (perhaps at the time of development) may be resealed with chip seal in accordance with the above criteria.
Once resealed, a chip surface is generally swept 3 days after and then again 2 weeks later. The sites are also monitored and extra sweeps can be programmed if required. Roads that have been chip resealed are expected to have some additional loose chip while the new surface settles and programmed sweeping will reduce the amount of the loose chip. The cooler months will also help the new surface to bed in and will result less loose chip."