Transporting New Zealand says it’s pleasing most major political parties are responding to calls to make transport a top priority in this year’s general election.
It follows the release of the industry body’s Road Transport Industry Platform for the 2023 General Election which laid out specific measures it would like to see parties commit to.
Transporting NZ interim chief executive Dom Kalasih says there have already been more innovative and proactive thinking on investing in roading since the industry plea when out less than eight weeks ago.
“The movement of freight and people is vital to our lives and our economy both domestically and internationally. Food, medicine, fuel, livestock, building materials, in fact almost anything you can think of relies heavily on road transport so a quality, reliable network that enables that to happen in a safe and efficient way is critical to our success,” Kalasih says.
“We’ve seen the terrible disruption to people lives created by recent natural disasters such as the flooding in Northland and Cyclone Gabrielle, and climate experts are predicting this will only get worse. We’ve also seen a deterioration in road surface quality across our network.
“Things aren’t working and we simply won’t survive if we can’t reliably move people and freight. Given the importance of this it would be irresponsible for any government not to be seriously committing to make positive changes,” he says.
Transporting NZ is also calling on transport minister David Parker for an update on the overdue release of the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport.
“We agree with the recent talk and thinking on changes to the current allocation of National Land Transport Fund. The targeted approach to speed management in high-risk areas, rather than blanket speed reduction that we’ve call for in our Road Transport Industry Platform for the 2023 General Election is just one example.
“It’s also extremely pleasing to hear the thinking and recognition that we need additional funding like public-private partnerships and new Crown funding.”
“It is unfortunate we’ve gone through a significant period where there isn’t much confidence in the pricing and timely delivery of roading projects but we believe those issues can be remedied,” Kalasih says.
“We also recognise that even if road construction and road maintenance projects are well managed, we are talking about tens of billions of dollars which is a significant amount of money.
“For those concerned about that large spend I’d ask them to think about the risk to peoples’ lives and our future generations if we don’t allocate and spend that money well,” he says.
