What is the Wellington Transport Alliance?
The Wellington Transport Alliance (WTA) is an eleven year alliance between Waka Kotahi, WSP New Zealand and Fulton Hogan to operate and maintain the state highway network assets in the Greater Wellington Region. WTA also manages the stock of structural assets such as bridges, tunnels and gantries in Marlborough, Nelson and Tasman.
What type of maintenance and road works do you do?
To keep Wellington connected and the state highway network safe, reliable and tidy we carry out regular maintenance activities including:
- Graffiti removal and recoating.
- Vegetation control including mowing, weed and pest plant removal, tree trimming and felling, spraying.
- Litter removal.
- Tunnel maintenance.
- Resurfacing and rehabilitation, patching shoulder maintenance and special surfacing works.
- Renewals and road reconstruction.
- Barrier repair and replacement.
- Bridge inspections and repairs.
- Sweeping of highways and cycleways.
- Lighting maintenance and replacement.
- Transport technology including cameras, variable message signs and signals.
- Stormwater management.
- Inspections.
We also carry out a number of initiatives for the Greater Wellington highway region, including:
- Network safety improvements and inspections.
- Traffic data collection and analysis to look for improvements to the flow of the network.
- Incident response to crashes, flooding, slips and other events.
- Resilience improvements such as rockfall protection.
- Environment management plans to reduce the impact of works on the environment.
Why do you do road works at night?
We weigh up a variety of options when scheduling roadworks. This includes traffic volumes, other work happening in the area, safety of our road workers, visibility, disruption to neighbours, and surrounding infrastructure.
Where possible, we try and schedule roadworks at night. It’s less disruptive to traffic as fewer people travel at night, which is also safer for our workers.
There are roadworks near my property. How will you minimise disruption to me?
We know roadworks can be inconvenient for neighbours and we aim to work efficiently with as little disruption as possible. Machinery is unavoidably noisy at times and reversing beepers are a mandatory safety measure. These are usually muffled but are still audible.
If there are roadworks near your property which may impact your access, we’ll communicate with you in advance so you can plan around them.
How can I receive notifications about maintenance in my area?
If you’d like to be notified of work in your area, we encourage you to:
- Sign up for email alerts
- Get in touch with us directly by emailing customer@wta.nzta.govt.nz
- Follow the Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency Wellington Facebook(external link)
What is your summer roadworks programme?
WTA undertakes an annual programme of resurfacing and rebuilding across the state highway network each year, starting in spring with most works happening in summer.
We do most of our works in summer because the weather is usually warmer, drier and there are more daylight hours, so conditions are ideal to create quality roads which last longer.
This programme mostly consists of three types of work:
- Resealing (“chip sealing”) – stone chips are spread over a layer of hot sprayed bitumen or emulsion. These can take some time to ‘bed’ into the existing road surface, and excess chip is swept off the road after a couple of days.
- Resurfacing – the existing road surface is removed, and a pre-made mix of stone chips, bitumen and other products is laid in its place.
- Rebuilding – the existing road surface and underlying road structure (pavement) is removed, and replaced with new materials. This is also known as pavement rehabilitation, and can involve the recycling of existing material.
What work do you carry out in winter?
In winter we focus on routine maintenance activities and responding to issues that appear over time, especially during and after weather events. This can include road closures due to snow, slips, flooding or other factors.
Pavements in New Zealand need to be constructed to cater for our unique geology and climate in a cost-effective manner. Potholes can occur all year round although the likelihood increases during the wetter months.
How are potholes formed on the road?
Potholes can occur for a number of reasons, however water is the primary cause. Potholes can grow rapidly without warning. Generally, sections of road that are reaching end of life and are due for renewal are often the worst affected areas as the pavement and surface are weaker and are starting to fail.
As the road surface ages, water can begin to pond in areas and penetrate through cracks or openings in the surface. As vehicles drive over ponding water, the motion creates a pumping effect, forcing the water down into the pavement. Over time this weakens the road and material will loosen, commonly resulting in potholes or other defects.
What do I do if I see a pothole or other concerns on the road?
Potholes can occur at any time but will often appear during heavy rain events, and we're seeing these events occur more frequently now due to climate change. Increased caution should be applied when driving through areas of standing water during wetter weather as unidentified potholes may be submerged. If you’re concerned about a pothole on a Wellington Region state highway, contact customer@wta.nzta.govt.nz
I damaged my car on a state highway road, what should I do?
Occasionally you may experience an issue on the state highway network that results in damage to your vehicle. Examples of this include chipped windscreens when driving on a section of newly sealed road, or tyre damage when driving over a pothole.
Waka Kotahi, through its WTA contract, has an obligation to take reasonable care to maintain the state highway network in good condition. However, in doing so we're constrained by available funding, weather events and resources. For this reason, we can't guarantee that the entire network will ever be free of defects.
You should drive to the conditions and recognise that conditions may vary along a stretch of road. You should consider insurance for your vehicle where possible in the event of any damage that may occur on the road, and your insurer should be your first point of contact when any damage has occurred. If appropriate, your insurer would then get in touch with Waka Kotahi.
Complaints that claim the road’s condition has caused damage to a vehicle are assessed on a case-by-case basis. We investigate to see if there are any exceptional circumstances we should be aware of, which may trigger further obligations on Waka Kotahi.
