Bob Edlin: Repair work for Transmission Gulley......

Roman roads are remembered as the Govt signals repair work just three years after Transmission Gully opening

The PoO team has been reminded that the Romans built an extensive, durable, and standardised network of roads that spanned the entire Roman Empire from Britain to the Middle East.

Kate Hawkesby: $880 million is too much money to not account for landslides

No one is more beside themselves about the Puhoi Motorway schemozzle than me.

Well, to be fair there are probably people more upset than me, but I’m pretty upset.

I mean, finally, finally after so long, such an interminable wait, finally we got our glorious smooth new road North. The gateway to the winterless North, bypassing all the windy roads and single lane hills and crappy old tar seal.

Karl du Fresne: Waka Kotahi's worse than useless road signs

Not that I’m picking on Waka Kotahi or anything (see earlier post), but does New Zealand have the world’s worst road signage?

I’ve expostulated on this subject before, to the extent that it’s threatening to become something of a personal obsession. What got me started again was our recent road trip, during which I saw some bizarre examples of irrational signage that seemed expressly designed to bamboozle travellers or send them the wrong way.

Mike Hosking: Road to Zero another in a long list of government failures

Hard to believe, but in Waka Kotahi's annual report, the famed Julie Anne Genter piece of genius, Road to Zero has failed.

It's failed before, of course. This is just the update confirming it's failed again this year as well.

Only one of six measures was met for the year.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Waka Kotahi's proposal to drop speed limits isn't evidenced-based

 

What really frustrates me about this debate about dropping the speed limits is that it’s not evidence-based.

This proposal doesn’t seem to be based on facts.

People have just accepted the argument at face value without looking a little deeper and asking: will dropping speed limits on 500 kilometres-worth of roading in this country really help us get road deaths down significantly?  Will it really help us get road deaths down to zero? 

So let’s look at the facts.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Waka Kotahi needs to stop overengineering cycleways

 

If you hate cycleways, you’re probably going to hate them a whole lot more when I finish telling you about the latest instalment in this.

Turns out cycleways are getting really expensive. The country’s cycleway building programme is blowing out big time.

Waka Kotahi has set aside $618 million to spend on cycleways over the next three years, but the budget has blown out already to $670 million, which is an overspend of 10 percent.

Why? In some cases, because of dumb mistakes.

Oliver Harwich: Bridges to Ukraine

International junkets for public servants are not my cup of tea. But I will make an exception for the New Zealand Transport Agency, Waka Kotahi. Let’s send their infrastructure team to Ukraine.

Waka Kotahi’s trip will not be about showing solidarity with Ukraine. That is what politicians do. Justin Trudeau just visited Kyiv, so maybe Jacinda Ardern will soon follow.

Waka Kotahi will not share lessons from its ‘Road to Zero’ campaign with the Ukrainian government, either. President Zelensky would probably not spend $10,000 on two large red prop ‘zeros’ as Waka Kotahi has just done.

No, Waka Kotahi’s trip to Ukraine will focus on learning about infrastructure delivery.

Yes, you read that right.