Nearly six months after its launch with much fanfare, the Government's road cone hotline is receiving an average of just three reports a day. Only a tiny proportion of tips investigated find too many cones, with some follow up visits discovering more cones are needed.
Launched in June, the $400,000 pilot 12-month road cone hotline aimed to monitor instances of road cone overuse in temporary traffic management.
In its first week, the hotline received 374 reports, but by early November that number had plunged to just 15 — a drop of over 95%. During November, the average number of daily reports has been three.
A written parliamentary question response showed that of sites inspected, 7.5% were found to have excessive use of road cones. But 2.5% were found to have insufficient use of road cones.
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told 1News the hotline was meeting its objectives and that there had been no specific expectations on the rate of tips.
"The data gathered to date has been valuable in understanding the underlying problems with excessive road cone usage," she told 1News.
1News reveals a hotline to report overuse of road cones has a budget of $400,000. (Source: 1News)
"The pilot is finding that the cause of concern is not technical 'overcompliance' at sites, but the variable adoption of risk-based guidance by road controlling authorities."
Those guidelines were introduced earlier this year, requiring councils to follow a risk-based approach to temporary traffic management to access Government funding.
'A complete waste of money'
Labour's transport spokesperson Tangi Utikere criticised the hotline, saying occasional misplacement of cones did not justify the cost of the programme.
"That does not justify the expense of implementing and maintaining a hotline," he said.
"This is an absolute farce from the Government, a complete waste of money, and waste of resource, pumping people and money into trying to sort out an issue that clearly does not exist."
Van Velden said the pilot was providing "value for money", with a cost of $148,545 as of September 30.
"This was significantly less than budgeted and funded from within WorkSafe’s existing baselines."
She added the pilot had helped strengthen relationships with those responsible for temporary traffic management, referred to as TTM, and was part of ongoing work with NZTA to improve a risk-based approach to road safety.
"The hotline is meeting its objectives to provide the public with a feedback mechanism, identifies the causes of concern about excessive TTM, and clarifies the role of WorkSafe and the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 in relation to TTM," van Velden said.
"We are now six months into the road cone hotline pilot, and next steps are currently under consideration."
The majority of road cone reports have come from Auckland and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).
Wellington and Christchurch follow as the next most reported locations, while councils such as Hutt, Tauranga, Whangārei and Western Bay of Plenty contribute smaller but steady numbers of reports.
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