Auckland mayor Wayne Brown says he is "determined" to reduce the number of road cones on the city's roads, pointing to the "unjustifiable economic and social disruption" of temporary traffic management.
In a media release, Brown laid out a four-point plan in order to tackle the "existing approach to temporary traffic management".
"I am determined to reduce the unjustifiable economic and social disruption caused by the existing approach to temporary traffic management," he said.
"The length of time that roadworks take and frequency of lane closures, together with the number of road cones used, is excessive and unnecessary."
He said the hundreds of millions spent on temporary traffic management was an "absurd and unjustifiable" burden and a "systemic failure".
“This is an absurd and unjustifiable burden on ratepayers, consumers, and road users. Fixing Auckland requires us to address exactly these sorts of systemic failures.
The mayor's plan includes, immediately beginning a six-month trial of "an approach to roadworks that is more tailored and targeted to risk".
"As part of the trial, explore opportunities to significantly improve programming and coordination of construction and maintenance work taking place within the road corridor, supporting a 'one-pass' approach by contractors wherever possible."
In addition, he wants agencies that create roadworks to look at "incentivising contractors to reduce the road space taken up through a system of financial charges and penalties."
Lastly, Brown has said he wants an independent report that "would quantify the costs and benefits of both the existing temporary traffic management approach and the more flexible trialled approach in terms of road safety, cost, delivery timeframes, and user experience".
"The report will inform the roll-out of a fit-for-purpose TTM system," he said.
The agencies the mayor names in his media release include Auckland Transport (AT), Waka Kotahi, fibre provider Chorus, electricity and gas provider Vector, and Watercare.
"Road repair and maintenance work is essential and unavoidable, and we must accept some traffic disruption as the price of building and maintaining Auckland’s infrastructure network, but the price we pay is too high," he said.
Brown said the Auckland Council Group, which included AT and Watercare, paid "at least $145 million for TTM each year" with even more paid by other utility companies.
Fulton Hogan has so far collected 10,500 bright orange cones nationwide. (Source: 1News)
"The proliferation of road cones is the result of an overly prescriptive temporary traffic management regime, where little to no adjustment is made for the actual level of risk, and this is where I see an opportunity for more immediate progress," he said.
"Contractors appear to take up more space on the road network than is necessary for their own parking, material storage and lunchrooms, increasing the cost of disruption to road users at minimal cost to themselves.
“I do not accept the mantra ‘safety at any cost’. It cannot continue to hold back safe and reasonable improvements to temporary traffic management, which is currently a costly and annoying imposition on the daily lives of Aucklanders.”
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