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Ryan Bridge: NZTA - the Grinch that stole Christmas · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A few years ago, we had a bunch of stories
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  Speaker 1: about Santa parades getting canceled because of red tape and
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: traffic management, all sorts of horrible stuff. NZTA was the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Grinch that stole Christmas? Do you remember this? Guess what?
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Two years on, despite a change of government, despite a
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: minister and Ministry of Regulation, despite the road cone tip line,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: the Grinch is back. This is one of those stories.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like the working from home in the
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: public service, you know, one of these stories where the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: government's almost powerless and the bureaucrats win. This time, it's
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  Speaker 1: peel Pul population around five hundred. It's rural State Highway three,
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  Speaker 1: North Island. They want to close the road on the
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  Speaker 1: main drag, which is their usual route. They want to
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  Speaker 1: close this road from five point thirty pm to eight pm,
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  Speaker 1: two and a half hours for you know, kids get
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  Speaker 1: to see the Santa sleigh riding through town. Lollies presumably
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: would be thrown from the floats. Or do they still
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: do that if you had a child or you arrest
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. I digress, but you get the idea.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: We've all been to one and they're great fun. Guess
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  Speaker 1: how much it was going to cost them because of
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  Speaker 1: the Grinches traffic rules and the resulting bill for traffic
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  Speaker 1: management costs. It would normally put them back about one
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  Speaker 1: thousand dollars this year. Wait for it, between ten and
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  Speaker 1: fourteen thousand dollars for two and a half hours. Now.
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  Speaker 1: You might balk at that, and I did. If you're
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  Speaker 1: organizing a Sanda parade or an Anzac parade or a
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  Speaker 1: community event, don't worry. The NZTA website has a helpful
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  Speaker 1: guide for you. It's New Zealand's Guide to Temporary Traffic Management.
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  Speaker 1: It's eighty eight pages long. I read it last night.
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  Speaker 1: Well no I didn't. I read the first page and
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  Speaker 1: I thought, this is absolute nonsense. The only thing you
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  Speaker 1: need to read is the first sentence of the foreword.
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  Speaker 1: Yes there's a fore word. Wakakotahi. New Zealand Transport Agency
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  Speaker 1: is committed to Road to zero, a safe for altiro
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  Speaker 1: in New Zealand where no one is killed or injured
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  Speaker 1: on our roads. I hate to be the bearer of
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  Speaker 1: bad news, but this is an absolute pipe dream of
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  Speaker 1: a god and will never happen. Aiming for the outcome
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  Speaker 1: is mad. What you get as a result is eighty
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  Speaker 1: eight pages of bs and a fourteen thousand dollar bill
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  Speaker 1: to get Santa on a sleigh for two hours. It's
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  Speaker 1: madness and it continues. The organizers don't worry. They say
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  Speaker 1: they have a Christmas meet and greet, but no actual parade.
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  Speaker 1: Christmas is the season to be jolly. It is the
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  Speaker 1: season forgiving, and NZTA is giving grinch vibes and a
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  Speaker 1: bad attitude in my view. For more from Early Edition
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News Talk Set B
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio