The RTA has spent the past few weeks resurfacing a 12 kilometre stretch of the highway north of town, however, when residents noticed they had not filled the pothole, about the size of a soccer ball, they called for an explanation.

When contacted by the Wellington Times, an RTA spokesperson said the repair of that section of road was the responsibility of Wellington Council and should be carried out by council’s routine maintenance patching crew.

“The purpose of the resealing (the RTA is undertaking) is to waterproof the road surface and provide skid resistance - it is not a repair to the road structure,” the spokesperson said.

“The bitumen resealing operation is a totally different activity than pothole repair and heavy patching.

“This crew does not have the materials and equipment available for repairing potholes.”

Wellington Council was notified of the issue on Wednesday and by lunchtime on Thursday had taken action to repair the damaged section of road.

Council’s technical services director Owen Johns said council regularly carried out inspections on State roads, a job which just this week has been made easier thanks to the installation of a Geographical Imaging System.

“The system does a printout of the potholes on the roads and records all of the inspections we do on State roads,” Mr Johns said.

“It will make it easier to track when the potholes are being repaired.”

In time this system will also be used on other roads across

the Wellington Local Government area, according to Mr Johns.

Residents are being urged to proceed with caution and obey all speed limits when travelling through areas where road works are taking place.