It sounds like the popular outcome was reached, but I do have a related question: How does it work when a paper road traverses privately owned land? Is there assumed to be an easement allowing public access?
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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In terms of access I believe paper roads function pretty much equivalently to public roads. This makes a bit more sense if we use their actual term - paper road is just the colloquial. They are just unformed legal roads.
https://www.herengaanuku.govt.nz/types-of-access/unformed-legal-roads
What I don't know is whether all roads are obliged to allow vehicles of all types or not; I would assume not as there are plenty that are marked not suitable for either weight, length or both. And it would be interesting to know if the vehicle has to be in road legal condition - ie normal tyres at road inflation etc. Beyond that though most of the unformed roads I know of are wholly unsuited for vehicles other than quad bikes, tractors etc. Their gradient is often well beyond standard, and they're not even gravelled like a farm track let alone formed with a nice hump to keep water draining off into the non-existent ditches on either side.
Usually they're just some lines on a map relatively devoid of the context of topography.
Despite the interest the bylaw received - thanks to a very well made campaign against it - this most likely impacts a fraction of the 3500* people that submitted, and of those its really only a fraction that have been tearing up the land either side of the road. So the solution of just blocking it to vehicles seems to me to be the most pragmatic.
Here's an example of one I know really well to explain what I mean a bit more, i've blacked out a couple houses to protect the owners identity a bit, though I doubt anybody would traipse around here, given the state of it.
Starting at the top you can see the green line - that's the side of the river which is also public land, but the purple line actually stops on the other bank of a very steep gully that a creek cuts through. That last short section to the north east until it ends drops at probably a 45 degree angle or more. If you tried to take a vehicle over that crest you would not stop until you were upside down under a metre of water and the only way of getting the vehicle out again would be a helicopter.
To get there you would somehow need to drive around the side of a bluff that's at least as much of an angle or more in the 2nd section that points directly at the green line. But to get to that you have to pass the third section starting on the very left hand side of the image where it goes up about 2 metres, then drops down about 5 metres over the space of about the same.
The owners have never even taken a quad bike along the entirety of that purple line I would bet, and likely not even a two wheeled dirt bike would safely do it; and all to get to a point where you can't stop and can't turn around :)
I walked it once to get to the green bit to go fishing, but it was so sketchy I spent nearly an hour finding a way to get down & then back up the other side and came away with very scratched legs from all the blackberry and brush, no trout.
Thanks for all the info! My in-laws also have a paper road over their farm, extending from the end of the road they live on. They live pretty remote but occasionally have someone show up with a campervan wanting to traverse it. A quad bike might make it, but not a car and definitely not a campervan. The paper road is pretty extensive too, tens of kilometers long until it meets up with another (actual) road. I'm not sure what there is at the fence line between farms.
They farm the road, but pretty sure they don't have a sign saying "public access" on the gate. I doubt they have heard of that requirement!
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:
Often known as paper roads, most date back to the 19th century, when they were charted to provide access to newly subdivided land being sold to settlers by the Crown.
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.
Yes, you cannot obstruct passage. Although I'm not sure if the road itself is considered private.