Transport Minister Simeon Brown: Traffic management road cone use ‘out of control’

Road cones on Queen St. Photo / Michael Craig

• Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced measures to reduce excessive road cone use and temporary traffic management (TTM) costs.
• NZTA found 145 of 800 reviewed roadwork sites unnecessary, highlighting mismanagement.
• The Government will require quarterly financial reports on TTM to enhance transparency and efficiency.

Transport Minister Simeon Brown is coming for road cones, announcing a suite of measures that he says will curb the excessive use of the traffic management tool on our streets.

Brown said the current level of temporary traffic management (TTM) was “out of control”.

“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,” Brown said.

“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,” Brown said.

Of those 800 sites, 558 (or 69.8%) were unattended and of those those 558 unattended sites, 145 (or 26%) were found to not be needed.

Brown said the Government will begin rolling out a “risk-based” approach to TTM use that will reduce the number of cones on our roads, and require NZTA-Waka Kotahi to publicly report in October on how much money has been spent on TTM each year for the past three years, and begin quarterly reporting.

The Government will also appoint independent members to the Road Efficiency Group to manage the reduction in TTM expenditure.

Brown said that he had asked NZTA to outline how much money had been spent 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 of their hard-earned money is being spent on TTM,” he said.

Brown said the Government had delivered $3.9 billion in funding 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,” he said.

“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.