Westland mayor Helen Lash is calling for a rethink of who pays to keep the country's popular cycle trails open. The Westland District Council closed the historic Totara Rail Bridge on Monday, after engineers warned it could fail at any time, with fatal results. The 115-year-old bridge near Ross connects the old goldmining town with the West Coast Wilderness trail, which lures 15,000 riders a year to the region.
Lash said a reeplacement bridge would cost at least $4 million and the council simply cannot afford it. "It would take a 4 percent rate increase - just for the one bridge and we've got 19 bridges from Ruatapu to Ross that need work." The closure has cut Ross out of the lucrative loop and caused consternation in the small town.
Biddy Manera, who chairs the Ross Goldfields and Heritage Centre, said the cycle trail has saved Ross, creating jobs and investment in accommodation businesses. "We've done so much to revive Ross, and make it attractive to the cyclists and now people are cancelling their summer bookings - it's hit us like a tonne of bricks." The West Coast trail had been a boon for the region, adding about $50m to the economy, Lash said.
But it did not directly benefit the council that was lumbered with the maintenance costs, the Westland mayor said. "The expectation under the [former] John Key government, that set the trails up, was that councils would own them and do the maintenance, but they had to be free for users and we couldn't charge a toll. " Had a toll .