Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Dave Tilton: Temporary Traffic Management Chair on NZ Transport's $800 million spend

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Dave Tilton: Temporary Traffic Management Chair on NZ Transport's $800 million spend · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: NDTA spent an eyewater and get this, three quarters of
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a billion bucks of taxpayers money on road cones and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: temporary traffic management in the past three years. And that
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't include spending on local councils and contractors. The Minister
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: of Transport, simm Brown, says the cost is eyewatering and excessive.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Dave Tilton is the former chair of the Temporary Traffic
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Management Industry Steering Group. He's with me this morning. Dave,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Good morning, morning yew. Unfortunately, I think there is a
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: direct correlation between the length of somebody's job title and
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: their productivity. So I'm not holding out hope for this. Dave,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: tell me, is he right? Does he have a point?
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Are we spending too much?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: I think generally the answer would be yes. Is the
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: waste in the system? Without question?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: I suppose how much? Is it wasteful? That's there isn't
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: a direct answer to that question yet.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think whose fault is the waste? Is it
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the industry that you're representing, or is that the government
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: regulation or both?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I think historically it would be the system that's constructed
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  Speaker 2: around it. How the decisions get made as to how
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  Speaker 2: much TTM gets deployed. So historically it's been a very
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: prescriptive system and that hasn't given a lot of room
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: for more pragmatic or site specific considerations. So systemically it
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: hasn't isn't designed to generate the right amount if you like.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the system because the government has just changed
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the system, so it's less Intense's.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Probably changed about twenty twenty one was where that spun up,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: so that certainly predates the current government.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, so is that where they made it more
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: intense or less intense?
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say probably intensity is probably the word I used,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: isn't quite right, but more flexible call it that. And
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: that's where that risk based system started to get designed,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: and it just this year it started to implement. But
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: of course it predates in terms of its design and set,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: and now it's starting to hit the ground.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the risk based system is cheaper.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: It can be, Yes, I mean, there is a percentage
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of waste in the system, and this method should engineer
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: out that waste better than the old method. But it's
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: very dependent on how people do it and how people
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: use it, and certainly the capability in the system to
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: do that, which is probably the piece that's lacking. We've
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: got twenty five plus years of prescriptive thinking that's going
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: to take it wild to get out. There's a lot
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: of inertia that comes with that.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Right, So what percentage of a big voting project should
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: be on traffic management? Typically?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Well, that sevenar in a six million is nine point
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: three percent of their total spend out of almost eight
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: and a half billion, So it's actually pretty small when
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: you think of it. That's a very big number, not
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: diminishing that, but certainly as a percentage, it's actually quite small.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I've been involved in projects that are more than that,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: and if it was half that, that'd be amazing. But
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: I know there is a limit on how how low
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: that can be in terms of getting worked. One.
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  Speaker 1: How does that compare to overseas?
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: There isn't a huge amount of data on that, but
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: it's not double. Put it that way, it would be
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: within five percent either way, certainly.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, which is still significant. What about for local councils.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: There was a traffic light that has been installed in
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the crossing in Auckland, and they reckon that the TTM
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: was twenty five to thirty five percent of the cost.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've got a small suburban street. I've seen
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: it happen, and you've got not only these temporary traffic
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: light things, but you've got someone with a stop ghost
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: sign standing next to the traffic light. I mean, what
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the hell's going on there?
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: And like, I don't know specific examples, but those are
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: the kind of situations where that flexible approach might lead
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: to a much more pragmatic outcome. So there isn't you
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: know when you when you look, I.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Mean, it's clearly lots of prescription that's happening now, you know.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, correct, So when you load something that was you
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: know a certain about a prescription where someone goes a lot.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: These are the rules I have to follow, and you know,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I've got no other way to do it, and that's
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: how the system is constructed around them. Then yeah, you're
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: going to need that. With some mismatches of environment versus
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: risk versus treatments.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, is someone is someone? Have we saved lives with
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the more prescriptive method? Was there fewer deaths than there
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: are now?
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  Speaker 2: No? Actually the opposite. So death and serious injuries from TTM,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: you know, has climbed pretty considerably over the last twenty years, which,
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  Speaker 2: to be honest, was the original trigger for the rest
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: based approach being explored. So you know, ultimately the method
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: hasn't really worked, although it's not to say that, you know,
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  Speaker 2: it was a bad idea. That's that's how the world works.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: That's that's how every other country does it. This rest
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: based approach from New Zealand is world first. Really, no
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  Speaker 2: one else is really doing it this.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Way, all right, Dave, thanks very much for your time.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it. Dave Tilton, who's the former chair of the
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: tem Impory Traffic Management Industry Steering Group, saying that basically
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: we tried to do it in a prescriptive way. It
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: cost us a hell of a lot of money and
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: it didn't even work.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 5:13
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• 5:16
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