I actually cycled this route a few weeks ago, I can see why people are upset. There has been a large number of vehicles come through that have absolutely chewed up the ground, in places there are multiple pathways formed as one has become impassable.
Maintaining vehicle and cycling access, as well as marking out where the road actually is, is the best outcome in my view.
yeah the folks I know don’t have a sign either; they’ve explored getting rid of it in the past but its a whole shambles to do so even though its an extremely pointless unformed road.
Where do they come from? Presumably they don’t magically appear on private land, were they allocated when it was crown land?
Yeah I think they’re usually a very old legacy thing, but i’m not sure if it was at the point the land was parcelled up or in later subdivisions. Or perhaps at some point someone did a map based roading plan.
There’s a few to the north of the town I grew up where they were clearly planning a road with a bridge to provide additional connectivity and it just never happened. You can usually follow the paper road and it’ll get a certain way along and either end across the river or stream from the other end, or sometimes turn into a driveway some distance from the other part.
I managed to find this:
With this map: https://maps.herengaanuku.govt.nz/Viewer/?map=202d9deb4dfa4c82a13536e12c58d8fa
So it seems you’re right, a very old legacy thing, mapped roads for access to subdivided land where the road was never formed by the council or it was but they didn’t maintain it.
Yep that’s the map where my screenshot came from, I got sucked down a rabbit hole yesterday & ended up exploring all over the place.