David Farrar: Almost $800 million on traffic management.

Simeon Brown revealed:

The Government has revealed that over the past three years, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) has spent an eyewatering $786 million of taxpayers’ money on road cones and temporary traffic management (TTM), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. …

That’s in just three years!

If you cut that spending in half, you could pay for the extra costs of Dunedin Hospital!

“This new approach shifts away from the blanket use of road cones and temporary speed limit restrictions and towards a risk-based approach which seeks to balance the need to ensure road workers are kept safe, while keeping costs under control.

“This approach is already driving strong results. TTM expenditure – which was 15.9 per cent of maintenance costs and 6.1 per cent of capital project costs last year dropped to 9.9 per cent of maintenance costs and 3.1 per cent of capital project costs in this year’s first quarter.

TTM is needed to varying degrees during construction, but it doesn’t add any value to the road itself. You want to spend more on actual construction and less on traffic management.

David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.