Provincial New Zealand wants to shake down the Government for some of the largesse offered to Northland with its byelection promise of new bridges galore.
The pledge to replace 10 of the economically-deprived region's 15 one-lane state highway bridges for up to $69 million is causing headaches for the Transport Agency in its preparation of a national budget for the three years from July.
With 158 one-lane bridges spread through its network, it faces pressure from community leaders of areas from the Coromandel Peninsula to the South Island's West Coast, where increasing numbers of self-drive tourists are heightening safety concerns.
Last year a Korean couple died after crashing off a single-lane bridge into the Wanganui River near Hari Hari on the West Coast -- just one of 49 in that region -- two days after arriving in New Zealand.
The Government organisation is meanwhile unable to provide a list of bridges which may be candidates for replacement, apart from those in Northland, given that it is still working through priorities for its national land transport programme.
Grey District mayor Tony Kokshoorn says the agency "needs to step up to the mark and realise tourist numbers are going through the roof, so we're getting great income from that".
"Having one-way bridges is not good enough in this day and age -- they have to put a plan in place to start replacing them.
"They're dangerous even for locals, not just tourists -- sometimes it's like playing Russian roulette, especially with unsuspecting tourists."
His Thames-Coromandel district counterpart, Glenn Leach, is grateful for the Government's two-lane replacement of the rickety old Kopu bridge at the gateway to the resort-rich peninsula for $47 million, early in its first term in office.
But the Coromandel still has 11 one-lane state highway bridges, nine along a loop route through his territory popular with motorcycles and visitors in campervans, and the other two near Whangamata and Whiritoa where firefighters report regular attendances at crashes.
Mr Leach says he doesn't begrudge Northland its new bridges, believing the Government has set a precedent for other visitor-oriented regions such as his.
"It's great to see the Government looking at the safety factor of one-lane bridges," he said.
"And if Northland is going to get them first, let's make sure that as a destination, Coromandel gets them second."
Unfortunately for the Coromandel mayor and his constituents in what has become safe National territory, the Transport Agency says there are no plans to replace any of the district's one-lane bridges "in the next five years", although they remain subject to regular maintenance.
It says the Hikuai Bridge on State Highway 25, where a motorcyclist died in 2011 after rounding a bend and hitting the rear car of stationary traffic waiting to cross it, is being resurfaced.
Another near Whiritoa, where a campervan driven by an overseas tourist crashed into a rubbish truck the same year while coming off it on the wrong side of the road, has just been re-piled and had a new deck installed.
Tomorrow's Northland byelection is not the first occasion on which the Government has faced Opposition accusations of "pork barrel politics" by offering regions new bridges.
A $212 million package for regional state highways before last year's general election included commitments to replace one-lane bridges at Kawarau Falls near Queenstown and over the Motu River, on State Highway 2 inland from Gisborne.
The package was announced soon after the Motu Bridge received a $100,000 upgrade, which Gisborne mayor Meng Foon described as a "sticky plaster" ahead of an urgently needed two-lane replacement on the main route between his region and the Bay of Plenty.
But in the eastern Bay of Plenty, on the same highway, Whakatane mayor Tony Bonne is still waiting for the elderly one-lane Pekatahi road-rail bridge -- which no longer carries trains -- to be replaced.
"That's ludicrous given the amount of produce that comes out from the East Coast -- it's a vital link between Gisborne and the ports," he said.
Mr Bonne recalled how a combine harvester became stuck in the middle of the bridge last year, causing traffic jams on each side of the Whakatane River as the Tuhoe tribe was opening new headquarters in Taneatua.
He wondered how many other highway bridges were deemed so fragile that they had special gates at each end to stop traffic crossing them during floods.
By Mathew Dearnaley of the New Zealand Herald
