New Zealand used to be notorious for having more sheep than people, but it’s now more topical to point out we now have more road cones than people.

Wānaka’s no exception, in fact we may be the extreme. Instead of ‘I Spy’, my family now plays ‘spot the completely unnecessary road cones’ on trips around Wānaka.

It’s nothing new, but this ‘sealing season’ (seals being road surfaces, not flippered pinnipeds) the number of cones and detours are particularly disruptive.

My morning glance at Facebook early this week caught these comments: “I got so angry this morning… I had no clue where to go and the roads were closed”; and “I got so confused today… I just couldn’t figure out how to get home.”

I had my own experience trying to pick up my son from Te Kura o Tititea Mt Aspiring College at 3.15pm, where half the road is closed (Queenstown Lakes District Council is building a pathway and raised speed tables as part of the ‘schools to pool’ active travel route) to drive him across town for an appointment, then back to Kelly’s Flat for after-school sports at 4pm. 

I remembered Aubrey Road was closed towards the Beacon Point Road end (QLDC has been undertaking wastewater and stormwater upgrades for more than a year), so with minutes to spare I drove to Koru Road to drop him off at Wānaka Primary School, only to find that road closed (QLDC is putting in a bike path). 

I may or may not have obeyed the ‘road closed’ signs as an alternative to re-routing via Kings Drive (there was nobody around). I’m not the only one frustrated by all the closures and detours in town.

“Cones mean progress,” said one commenter on Facebook this week. “Just think how good it will be when it’s done.”

So I checked in with deputy mayor Quentin Smith, who confirmed that most of the roadworks underway - when completed - will result in “an improvement and positive additions” to our roading network.

Most of the projects will be finished by Easter (most projects are QLDC’s, apart from the NZTA Waka Kotahi path from Anderson Road to Sir Tim Wallis Drive, and its Mt Iron Junction roundabout).

“It will be temporary and we will get out the other side,” Quentin said. The projects were planned to not disrupt the holiday season, but many of them have tipped into the ‘event season’, he said. [Here I was thinking we had only four seasons.] 

Quentin said there’s never an easy time to disrupt things, but the end of sealing season is May, and winter will offer “a bit of a reprieve”.

But wait, there’s more: Quentin says there’s “an enormous amount of work still in the pipeline”, and upcoming work on the sewerage pipes to Lake Hāwea and work along Ballantyne Road will be “even more disruptive”.

Looks like we’ll have to get used to our daily Game of Cones.

[With thanks to former Wānaka App journalist Harri Jordan.]

PHOTO: Supplied