Simeon Brown: Transport Minister on the $4b funding boost for pothole prevention

The Transport Minister's confident the pothole prevention funding boost will result in more roads being fixed. 

The Transport Agency's confirmed it'll put more than $2 billion into prevention on state highways, and nearly $2 billion for local roads. 

It'll cover resealing, rehabilitation, and drainage maintenance. 

Simeon Brown told Mike Hosking that they're focused on getting the cost of traffic management down so more money goes towards actually fixing the infrastructure. 

He says the Government's already been working with NZTA on this issue and found 145 of 800 traffic management sites were not needed. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the government came to the pothole party. Just over
two billion going on state highways. One point nine billion
will be for the local roads. Transport Minister Simme and
Brown with us on.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
This very good morning, Good morning mine.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
All the reaction I'm getting this morning, hundreds of text
road management. What are you going to do about road management?
Because four billions a lot of money, but not of you,
you know, wasted all on cones.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Absolutely, this government's committed to getting the cost of traffic
management down and in fact we've already been working very
closely with MTTA on this particular issue. They audited eight
hundred of their traffic eight hundred of their work sites
back in Februan and found one hundred and forty five
of them were not needed. So they're taking a much
more firmer approach to actually getting on top of traffic management.

(00:39):
They're also issuing a new code for traffic management operators
which is much more aligned to the Australian model. We
see a lot fewer cones on the roads. And we're
also going to start requiring MDEDA to report on regularly
how much actually spending on traffic management. They understand the
cost of bitchmen. They understand the cost of aggregate, they
understand the cost of labor, but they don't understand the
cost of traffic management. We're going to require them to

(01:01):
actually publish that so that we can get those numbers down.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
And do they accept there's a problem and we're all
over it.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Absolutely, they do accept the problem. And it's our job
as a government to make sure that they are all
over it to get those costs down, because I want
this extra funding to go into actually fixing our roads
and proving the quality of our roads so that Kewis
can get where they need to go quickly and safe.
And they don't think there's any of your listeners listening
todays say our roads are a great state. We do
need to put more money into our roads, but I
want it going into actually fixing the roads and not

(01:28):
lining in the pockets of traffic management companies.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Couldn't agree more. The other thing they're concerned about is
it's ongoing, So yep, fix fix up the mess that's
been so shoddily. Let go. Once you've fixed it up.
Is it ongoing so we're not here again?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yes, absolutely, this is a step change, and this is
about actually ensuring that the funding goes into not just
the patchwork cook we've seen on our roads under the
last three years of the last government, but actually saying
we need to be resealing, rehabilitating our roads to those
long term renewal standards are two percent being rebuilt every
year up to nine percent being resealed every year, and
actually getting drainage under control and actually managing that to

(02:04):
get the water off our roads. So this is about
putting long term targets in place for the agency. It's
not just giving them more money, but it's actually clear
targets that they need to meet in order to actually
ensure our roads are being properly maintained rather than sort
of the patchwork fixed that the last government's approach was
to was to road maintenance, which was actually more expensive
in the long run because you just patched over it

(02:25):
and then you had to patch over it again and
again again.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Exactly all right, go well this weekend, appreciate it very
much to me in brand Transport Minister, So you got
the good word on traffic management.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
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