Kāpiti is the first district in the country to benefit from a brand new truck designed to test road pavement strength.

Sean Mallon, Group Manager Infrastructure and Asset Management, says the newly-imported iPave testing truck will provide valuable data to help better target our limited maintenance dollars.

“We’re always looking for ways to get better value for money for our ratepayers and improve levels of service on our roading network. So, we were pleased to be able to take up an offer from the National Transport Research Organisation to trial their new vehicle on our roads. The iPave testing truck will help us invest our maintenance dollars where they’re really needed and identify weak spots so they can be repaired before they fail. This will also help meet the Government’s new priority of reducing potholes on roads,” said Mr Mallon.

As well as testing for road strength, roughness, rutting and cracking, the new vehicle uses ground penetrating radar to identify weak spots under the road, as well as laser technology and high-resolution cameras to build a 3D image of the road and its surrounds.

“Another benefit of this vehicle is that it gathers all this above and below-the-road data while driving at normal traffic speed, reducing the cost and disruption of traffic management which some manual on-the-ground test methods require. The advanced onboard computers analyse the data within 48 hours, giving us real time information about the condition of our roads,” said Mr Mallon.

This first round of data will also help verify other testing methods and provide a baseline to track performance of our roading network over time.

Once the iPave testing truck finishes in Kāpiti, it’s off to test highways in the South Island. It’ll be back up our way later this year.

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