Road cones and temporary traffic management continue to be something of a war zone for driver opinion.
We were heading to church on a recent Sunday, travelling from Maunu to Kensington. The trip usually takes around 15 minutes and we allow five minutes spare, just in case. The line of traffic started at Kiwi North and didn’t seem to be moving much either way. “Must be an accident,” we thought, but we stayed in line for the next 35 minutes as we slowly moved past a Northpower work site with major pole upgrades at the Te Mai shops. We arrived as the sermon was just concluding.
These were major works being done on a Sunday, and temporary traffic management was in place. But is it reasonable for a major utility to hold up a state highway for that length of time, without letting affected drivers know what was going on?
Road cones and temporary traffic management continue to be something of a war zone for driver opinion. We need to keep this in perspective, against the purpose and practice of how to safely manage roadside works.
Temporary Traffic Management started in 2000, to standardise what was a haphazard practice of dealing with roadside worker safety.
The code has grown from 515 clauses in 2000 to 1450 clauses in 2023. An absolute tome of regulation and boxes to tick, about what contractors need to do in managing roadside works.
The code is horribly prescriptive, leaving no room for professional judgment and experience, and has created a lucrative traffic management industry where sub-contractors charge by the cone and those who profit from it decide what is needed.
In 2023, NZTA evolved a risk-based approach, as opposed to having one-size-fits-all traffic management, to apply to all road works. “This allowed contractors to use their experience and common sense to keep everyone safe on the roadside, rather than specify road cones down to the last centimetre,” according to Transport Minister Chris Bishop. Temporary traffic management costs dropped from 15.9% of roadside jobs on state highways, to 9.9% of state highway job costs in just one quarter last year, and apparently that downward trend continues.
Last week, Bishop also announced that many local road controlling authorities are still using the old code of practice. He indicated that in future, the NZTA board will not approve funding for roading jobs unless they are using the risk-based approach to temporary traffic management.
Local authorities, it seems, need to catch up. In response to a parliamentary question last week, the minister identified that, of 12,000 inspections of temporary traffic management sites on local roads, 3000 were found to be completely redundant. That’s 25% redundant! This could be a valid reason for the recently announced road cone “Hotline”, set up for the public to identify inappropriately used road cones and temporary traffic management.
Much of the road cone news has been around public expense, raising the question of ratepayer or taxpayer waste of money.
In a private capacity, we are a very small property developer, subdividing to create extra potential living environments.
In the past 12 months, we have had personal experience of complying with respective state highway and local road requirements about roadside works.
We live next to a state highway and an NZTA condition for a single-lot subdivision was to upgrade our vehicle crossing.
The TTM plan required shoulder closure for 100m on either side of the works. Access to the works was from our private road, so that no stop/go was required.
To me, the traffic management plan reflected the risks of the job, as this is a busy state highway but there were no vehicles entering the site from the highway.
The cost of traffic management was 25% of the total job. If I had been allowed to hire the 200 cones at $11 for the seven days, the cost could have been down to 10% of the job!
We have also recently done a small two-lot subdivision in the city, next to a local urban street.
The job involved a footpath crossing, water connection and drilling for a power connection. Temporary traffic management was for about 25m footpath diversion and shoulder closure, allowing access from the local road, but which only needed roadside cones, and no stop/go.
The cost included $755 per day for monitoring! At 40% of the job costs, I reflected back to the contractor that this was an absolute rort. It reflected a prescriptive rather than risk-based approach, which just adds extra to the cost of development.
So, there you have it, a private developer’s experience of a prescriptive against a risk-based approach to road cones.
It’s not just ratepayers and taxpayers who bear these costs.
Temporary traffic management allows RCAs to do roadside work safely, but this also should be as convenient and cost-effective as possible, reflecting the risks to all those involved.