Sealing and Widening of Roads

Road Seal Widening

We carry out around three kilometers of 'widening' on sealed roads each year.

Widening provides what's officially called a 'recovery margin' for vehicles so if they veer out of control there is enough space for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. Widening may also be done to provide for parking. For information on how we set the width of roads in the district please check out our Development Code.

New work on roads is usually done to meet required widths, however there is a backlog of roads that do not meet the requirements, We've got these roads ranked in order of priority and our aim is to upgrade these as funding becomes available.

Road Seal Extensions

There are 1,072km of local roads in the Western Bay District, of which, 159km remain unsealed.

The sealing of unsealed roads in the District is determined in order of priority by an assessment of each road under the following criteria:

• The volume of traffic the road carries - 50%
• The dust exposure to residents living on the road - 50%

The average cost to undertake seal extension works on low volume roads is around $450,000 per km. Costs are influenced by land purchase requirements, land use and expected vehicle loadings, the existing alignments and topography, service relocations, consent conditions, drainage requirements, entranceway numbers and intersections.

View the updated list of roads here - PDF (35 KB)

Council consulted on the new draft seal extension prioritisation policy as part of the 22/23 Annual Plan process in June 2022. See the updated policy here.