The roading and infrastructure industries have been calling for years, for a long-term pipeline of work, which gives confidence to continue to invest in their people and their businesses.
This ensures that they train people, employ skills, invest in machinery and technology, raise the finance and prepare to do the work.
That work is under way now, and we will need to be patient and respectful with it.
Those increased workers on our roads want to go home to their families at night, and their safety depends on us.
Ramping up the national road maintenance funding places an obligation on our local authorities to raise their local share through rates, and to employ the necessary staff and expertise to do the work.
This is called the Financial Assistance Rate (FAR) – the rate that the National Land Transport Fund subsidises local authorities for their roading spend. Far North’s FAR is 69%, Kaipara’s is 62% and Whangārei’s is 53%.
The national average is 53%. State Highways are funded 100% by the national fund.
With these sorts of subsidy levels and a significantly increased budget, there’s really no excuse for not seeing a real improvement in Northland roads over the next three years.
But fixing potholes and improving the road surface is one thing, changing the nature of the road with unconsulted new road markings and signage is quite another.
The following is a message from a colleague who regularly travels between Whangārei and Dargaville.
“It was with great satisfaction that I drove over the freshly completed three straights of widened and perfectly completed highway referred to as the Fudge Farm realignment.
“To my utter disbelief though, all these straights have been road marked over the weekend, with double yellow lines.”
The fatal crashes on State Highway 14 over the past five years have mostly been frustration crashes, motorists picking the wrong or unsafe places to pass.
The opportunities to pass on this highway are very limited as it has been, now this has made it worse. This is social engineering to extreme, and will be a disaster for driver frustration and a fishing hole for enforcement.
What consultation or crash data analysis has been done to justify this change?
It is 23km to the next passing lane from this area heading towards Whangārei, and there is only one passing lane over the entire 60km heading from Whangārei to Dargaville.
There is no justification to take away passing opportunities on straights where you can safely pass.”
Road markings play a crucial role in maintaining order, regulating traffic flow and ultimately safeguarding lives on the road.
They are the silent communicators, conveying vital information to drivers about lane boundaries, pedestrian crossings and potential hazards.
They guide drivers at night, reducing the possibility of head-on or run-off-road accidents.
They promote compliance and discipline, serving as regulatory tools and a mechanism for enforcing traffic laws. But they should be easy to understand and should not be used with impunity.
The broken yellow line means no stopping and the solid yellow line means no passing. They work 24/7 and should not be used as a convenience to try to limit the natural flow of the roading environment, and where there is no demonstrable danger, or benefit to road safety.
We read the roads according to the signs that they send us.
As with speed limits, these signs need to make sense to us as well.
