James Smith: Road Carriers Association Advocacy General Manger opposes Shane Jones' four-lane highway prediction

Shane Jones has been chewed out by the Road Carriers Association for suggesting four-lane highways are a thing of the past. 

The NZ First MP says he doesn't expect any more to be built in his lifetime, because they're too expensive to justify.

But Road Carriers Association Advocacy General Manger James Smith says this is one of the dumbest things he's ever heard from a politician. 

He told Heather du Plessis-Allan that four lane highways deliver safety and productivity. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here duper c Ellen.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Jane Jones has said he believes the era of building
four lane highways is over. He was at an infrastructure
debate last night and said he doesn't expect anymore to
be built in his lifetime because politicians will struggle to
justify the cost now. James Smith is the Road Carriers
Association Advocacy general manager and with US high James.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Greetings, Heather.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Is he right?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
No, It's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard
from a politician in which is saying something this close
to an election.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Why is he wrong?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Every piece of data out there shows that four lane highways,
especially those with the center medium barrier, delivers safety and productivity.
So the fact that he's not wanting to aspire to
build any more of them is rarely consigning significant parts
of the country to putting up with the goat tracks

(00:54):
of the past. It's unacceptable.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Really, Yeah, I agree with you, and I find it
very disappointing that we're apparently giving up on just decent roads.
But James, tell me the next one that they.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Do build, Well, you mentioned one earlier in the program,
and there's Mill Road has been screaming out for the
last thirty years. It needs to be built. These these
the Swiss length. There's there's myriads of these parts of
the network where currently you've got two lanes. There's all
large parts of the state highway main State highway one's

(01:27):
that's sill only two lanes with no center medium barrier.
And you just need to look at the d sis
that we are decent, serious injury creations that are occurring
due to inadequate infrastructure. It's just unacceptable to admit that
we're never going to aspire to lift ourselves off off
that very low base.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I worry about the shames because yes, Mill Road is
when when I talk, when I think about four lane highways,
that's the one that comes to mind. But what we
have here is Mill Road, which is a road that
has been promised and planned by this government. We now
have a minister in this government saying they're not doing
four lane highways anymore. So does that mean that we
need to downgrade our expectations for mil.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Rock, No, absolutely not. We need to upgrade our politicians,
we need to we need to upgrade the we should
be looking at how do we get a hell of
a lot smarter at building infrastructure. How do we stop
the wasteful spending, How do we stop the acceptance of mediocrity.

(02:32):
If we spend as much energy lifting our GDP, lifting
the aspirational targets of the country, then we could achieve
all sorts of things just unacceptable to the admitting defeat.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Love the cut of your JYP Today, mate, James Smith,
Road Carrier's Association Advocacy General Manager.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
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