- By Simeon Brown, Member of Parliament for Pakuranga
The coalition Government is taking action to reduce expenditure on road cones and temporary traffic management (TTM) while maintaining the safety of workers and road users.
This includes rolling out a new risk-based approach to TTM that will reduce the number of road cones on our roads.
Road maintenance is essential and some level of TTM is unavoidable, but the current approach is out of control with excessive use of road cones and temporary speed limit reductions, sometimes left in place when work is complete.
In fact, the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) conducted a review of TTM at 800 maintenance worksites on the State Highway network across the country in February and found that 145 of these sites were not needed.
Excessive and unnecessary TTM increases costs while forcing people to slow down, frustrating drivers across New Zealand.
NZTA is responding to the Government’s expectation that TTM expenditure is reduced by rolling out a new risk-based TTM guidance at worksites on State Highways.
This is based on the Australian approach to TTM where there is far less reliance on road cones.
This new approach will include changes to contracts, a new way of training, and monitoring to ensure it meets both safety and cost efficiency outcomes.
NZTA is now also continually reviewing current TTM on the network and instructing its suppliers to remove it when no longer required.
However, we won’t know whether these changes are effective unless we are also reporting and measuring whether it is working.
When I became Minister of Transport, I asked NZTA to outline how much money had been spent by NZTA each year for the past three years on Temporary Traffic Management and was advised this information was not compiled and so was unavailable.
The Government will be requiring NZTA and all Road Controlling Authorities to report quarterly on the amount of taxpayers’ money it is spending so that Kiwis know how much is being spent on TTM.
The first of these reports will be produced in October and will determine a baseline of how much NZTA has spent on TTM in the last three years.
My expectation is that expenditure on road cones and TTM will reduce each year going forward.
Already our Government has delivered a $3.9 billion funding boost to fix and prevent potholes on our State Highways and local roads.
Over the next decade, NZTA will deliver an increased road renewals programme in an efficient way that reduces the number of road cones and TTM costs overall.
This includes our recently delivered commitment to introduce targets which will see 95 per cent of potholes on High Volume, National, and Arterial state highways fixed within 24 hours of being identified.
Kiwis want potholes fixed and our roads properly maintained without excessive TTM, to help improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of our transport network.
