Potholes like this can be found throughout Auckland city after this year's storms Photo: RNZ / Lois Williams
Auckland Transport plans to spend the summer holidays working on the city's pothole problem, but the agency said it needs more funding to get ahead of its 1400km backlog of damaged roads.
It hoped to resurface 400km of the city's roads by the end of summer.
Chief executive Dean Kimpton called it the "Summer Road Reno".
"This year, in anticipation of good weather, we're back.
"While people are out on holiday, we want to fix the roads."
It may have a fancy name, but Greater Auckland's Matt Lowrie said it was nothing new.
"This is part of a regular piece of work they do every year, they're just putting a bit more branding and marketing around it.
"This is pretty standard practice, summer is when they do a lot of road works because they need the dry conditions for it."
But Auckland Transport promised the "Summer Road Reno" would be a step up from previous years, particularly after wet weather caused the agency to fall short of its goals last summer.
Kimpton wanted to make up for lost time, but he admitted the sea of orange cones might be inconvenient for drivers.
"People will be somewhat inconvenienced, but the focus is also on telling people well beforehand that we're out renovating.
"While you're out surfing, we're resurfacing. So people can appreciate we're doing something important for them and that these people are giving up the holiday period to do a job that Auckland desperately needs."
He said the work needed to be done soon so it didn't get worse in the future.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon and MP Simeon Brown look at potholes before the election. Photo: RNZ / Delphine Herbert
"If we don't resurface, then we're into rebuild," he said. "Rebuild[ing] is ten to twenty times the cost."
Chief engineer Murray Burt was anticipating some blowback from frustrated Aucklanders.
"It's important to respect those frontline workers, there have been [instances] of road workers receiving physical and verbal abuse.
"These are members of the community who are doing their job and are actually out there fixing the roads for Auckland and Aucklanders."
Burt said Auckland Transport had to pick up the pace to get ahead of its 1400km backlog.
"With the resources we have we're doing as much as possible, however [it's] not enough at the moment.
"What we really need to achieve is 10 percent of the network resurfaced every year, [but] the funding that we have only allows us to cover around 5 or 6 percent of the network."
He said the new government should put more money into the National Land Transport Fund.
"Looking at the next three-year period, the shortage of funding across all of New Zealand for local road renewals is about $1 billion, and Auckland [is] short about $200 million."
Minister for Auckland Simeon Brown said fixing the city's roads would be a top priority.
"We want to see greater focus on building and maintaining the roading network.
"There's a process we need to go through... to reallocate those funds and prioritise fixing our roads rather than building big white elephants like light rail, which is what the previous government was focused on."
Brown said the government's new transport policy statement would go out for consultation early next year.
Auckland Transport said it had already begun resurfacing some roads with the work to continue through to the end of March.
