AFAIK, they were only banned while the works were being done and for a short while afterwards to allow it all to settle in.
I’ll be riding over that way next weekend so I’ll see if it’s open to 4×4’s then.
There’s a 12-month temporary prohibition that pretty much runs from when the work finished. I think the rationale is, as you say, that the trail can ‘repair itself’ – which sounds a bit irrational, but there you go – for a year, before the internal combustion boys are allowed to destroy it again. There are a couple of massive boulders blocking gate openings at the moment, or at least there were a few weeks back.
I can’t imagine any repairs surviving long up there – the Roych is starting to revert nicely to type for example, and the Broken Road pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the general stability and sustainability of surfaced tracks in the area.
The whole track restoration thing really used to wind me up, now I just look at it as a temporary blip, though I reckon the exception to the sanitisation rule is Cut Gate, where they did a reasonable job of retaining the character of the trail.
