On first blush, National’s new pothole policy could be seen as a good thing.

Essentially, what it wants to do if it forms the next government, is set-up a special Pothole Repair Fund and cut the pothole response rate from 48 hours to 24 hours. Which I never knew existed - but it does, apparently.

It would be a $500 million fund and National says it would pay for it by stopping the speed limit changes, cutting back on speed bump installations, and dumping the Road to Zero campaign.

So you look at that and you think ‘oh yeah, good practical stuff’.

Because, I think we can all agree that, while the Road to Zero thing is well-intentioned, it has just become something else for people to ignore. Because, overall, the road toll hasn’t gone down, has it? Not that the ads have helped much.

Although, I did see that one person tragically died on the roads over the long weekend - but that was down from five last Matariki weekend.

As for all the speed limit changes - it can be hard to know what speed you should be going in different areas, can’t it?

The other thing National would cut back-on to help pay for the pothole repairs, is what’s being spent on speed bumps.

So less speed bumps, less speed limit changes and no more Road to Zero in exchange for faster pothole repairs.

The reason I say it could be seen as a good thing, is because I think it’s just another one of those band aids that politicians are very good at.

For example, there is no talk from National about what products are actually going to be used to fix all these potholes. Or how they’re going to be repaired.

Because it’s all very well fixing them. But if we’re just going to continue fixing them the way we are at the moment, then why bother?

How many times have you seen a pothole repaired and then needing re-repairing within a short amount of time?

Generally, the reason why that happens is that all these potholes are fixed using cold asphalt - or coldmix, as it’s known in the roading business. The problem with coldmix is that it’s not very good at bonding with the road and tends to fail again when water gets into the road surface.

If you really want to do a proper job - something that lasts longer than the quick and dirty “coldmix” repair - then you have to remove the whole road surface and replace it with hot asphalt. Which makes sense when you think about it.

But, from what I’ve seen and heard, National doesn’t seem to have thought much about that.

It’s all very well for it to say it’s going to fix potholes faster and fix more of them. But if it's just going to keep doing the repairs in the same haphazard way they’re done at the moment, then it’s ‘thanks but no thanks’ from me.

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