Dave Tilton: Parallaxx CEO on the road cone tipline ending six months early

It's thought there are few silver linings to come from the Government's road cone hotline. 

The pilot, which encouraged the public to report excessive cone use, ends tomorrow, six months ahead of schedule. 

Site visits found 86% of worksites were already compliant, and Workplace Relations Minister Brooke van Velden says the trial has done what it needed to do. 

CEO of traffic management company Parallaxx Dave Tilton told Andrew Dickens some of the data collection may be useful. 

He says it brought the road control authorities including NZTA, WorkSafe, and councils together well. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the Rogue Cone hotline came and went. It's life
short lived. The government says job done, data collected awkward
bit ninety three percent of complaints were about cones that
were perfectly fine under the rules. Dave Tilden and joins
us this morning, All Dave.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Morning, Andrew.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Was this a waste of time?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I'd say there's a couple of ff I was to
look at the silver lining. There's maybe a couple of
useful things that have come out of it, But generally
I'd say it's probably a distraction. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Was it a stunt or was the data collection that
they got from it good?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'd say some of the data could be quite useful.
I'd suggest that it bought the road controlling authorities, the
Council's Work Safe ENTERITA a little bit closer together, got
them working on the topic well. And so some of
the data they've collected might be useful. But I'd say
it probably doesn't. It isn't isn't valid based on the
effort put it well.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
It's obviously when they say ninety three percent of the
complaints were about cones that were perfectly fine, that means
they were compliant. So the complainants were complaining about something
that was okay under the rules. The problem is not
actually complaining about them or excessive use of them, it's
the rules.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, correct, And that system change has been underway for
a couple of years now, so that's sort of already
in motion, and so i'd suggest that the current hotline
being sort of injected into that hasn't necessarily helped. It's
probably hindered the system change that everyone's after.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
And yes, and the new rules coming up from NZTA,
councilors have to make sure that they are compliant with
the new rules, and that has to happen by the
first of July. And as I pointed out earlier this morning,
that's the first of July twenty twenty seven. These are
rope cones. Why is it taking so long?

Speaker 2 (01:42):
So that's the last milestone of a series of changes
that all new contracts are actually from the first of
July twenty twenty sixth. So and themselves, NDTA, all of
their contracts are already in motion. In fact, many of
them already switched. So that that milestone you've got there
is the very last of all of them, and that's
the councils themselves, where NDTA doesn't necessarily have a direct

(02:05):
instruction role that they can play with those councils all
the time. So that's the Minister Transport a short time
ago announcing around how the funding might be compromised as
the councils don't make that shift. So there's several moving
parts there that have that timeline out to that point.
But overall it's actually it's a pretty big capability challenge
for the sector to change from rule following to risk

(02:27):
based thinking. So it is somewhat understandable how it takes
so long.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Okay, and finally has the traffic management industry being milking it.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
It's hard to say, I personally don't supply physical TTM,
and the sector is simply a product of the inertia
and the type of system that it's been underpinned by.
It's a compliance based system, so people will follow the
rules in front of them, and those rules have been
proven to not serve society the way we want them to,

(03:02):
and so they're going to get changed. And I think
it's less about what the it's more about the incentives
that people have in the system as a whole, necessary
to many ulterior multimotives, good So.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Dave Tellton For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
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