The Government says the rollout of a new risk-based approach to temporary traffic management (TTM) will reduce the number and cost of road cones on New Zealand roads, while maintaining the safety of workers and road users.
Transport Minister Simeon Brown says that while road maintenance was essential, the current TTM approach was “out of control”.
“Road maintenance is essential, and some level of TTM is unavoidable,” said the Minister.
“Excessive use of road cones and temporary speed limit reductions – sometimes left in place when work is complete – simply increases cost, forces people to slow down, and frustrates drivers.
“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, showing how out of control the use of road cones and temporary traffic management has become.”
Mr Brown said the rollout of NZTA’s new risk-based TTM guidance for State Highway worksites was based on the Australian approach, where there is far less reliance on the humble orange road cone.
“This new approach will include changes to contracts, a new way of training, and monitoring to ensure this meets both safety and cost efficiency outcomes. NZTA is now also continually reviewing current TTM on the network and instructing its suppliers to remove TTM that is not required,” he said.
“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.Â
“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 of their hard-earned money 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.”
The Government is also set to appoint independent members to the Road Efficiency Group (REG) with a focus on finding efficiencies in road maintenance spending to deliver more for taxpayers’ investment in road maintenance, said the Minister.
“The Government is also reviewing the Health and Safety at Work Act and the impact it has on TTM practices in order to see if changes are required to the Act to ensure we balance the safety of road workers with the need to keep costs under control and not unnecessarily inconvenience motorists,” he said.
