Christchurch City Council manages around 3,000 kilometers of footpath across the northern, central, and southern parts of the city. Getting a complete picture of the network's current condition was out of reach. The traditional approach, manual inspections using a scooter, camera, and notepad, was only able to cover 10 to 30 percent of the network each year, leaving the Council with data that was both stale and incomplete.

When the city tendered its road maintenance contract, HEB Construction included RoadAI to make its offer more appealing. It caught the council’s eye, and when the contract was signed and operations began, they came back with a question: could RoadAI be used to assess footpaths as well as carriageways?

"We didn't say yes outright. We said let's give it a try — and the Council agreed."

Carol Ma
National Maintenance Assets Lead

Pilot survey in earthquake-hit Bromley

The team picked a section of Bromley, a Christchurch suburb badly affected by the 2011 earthquake, where the footpath condition was known to be poor. The plan was to survey the area with RoadAI, hand the results to an HEB road inspector, and have the inspector verify the findings on foot.

The two assessments aligned closely — around 86 percent agreement between RoadAI's output and the inspector's on-the-ground verification. On that basis, the Council agreed to roll the work out across the whole network.

A complete survey in months (or less)

HEB surveyed the full 3,000 km footpath network in months using an e-scooter mounted with a smartphone running the RoadAI app.

The process was much faster with RoadAI, but the scooter had to be taken out of service regularly for charging, maintenance, and repairs. These disruptions became the limiting factors for completing the survey.

Carol is keen to share the lessons learned with other councils: “If we had a more reliable scooter we’d cover 30 kilometers a day, and it wouldn’t be a big exercise.”

Phantom footpaths

Working through the network also uncovered errors in the City Council’s asset database. Some footpaths in the database did not exist. Others were classified as footpaths but turned out to be something else.

The survey became an opportunity to clean the asset database while gathering the condition data. For the Council, the validated asset register was a useful second outcome.

Council engineers work with RoadAI too

Since introducing RoadAI to the Christchurch contract and providing the Council with access, the city's engineers now have full visibility into the network. And with regularly updated video capturing the condition of the network, RoadAI offers a more current and detailed view than tools like Google Street View.

Council engineers actively use RoadAI to review and validate work. With access to time-stamped video and supporting data, they can review what was captured in the field and identify any items that may have been missed.

This level of transparency has improved confidence in the data and created a shared view of network condition between HEB and the Council.

What's next for Christchurch

For HEB Construction, the full 3,000 km of footpath is now familiar ground. RoadAI collects condition data for the city’s carriageways and footpaths, and the Council has direct access to the video footage and data behind every score.

For the first time, Christchurch City Council has a complete view of the current state of its footpath network, enabling more efficient planned maintenance and prioritized reactive repairs to keep the city’s footpaths safe and accessible.