Transport Minister Rates His 1st Year

One year on, Transport Minister Steven Joyce, says he feels he’s starting to make some real gains by having “reprioritised the transport spend to ensure productivity is the focus.”

Addressing the Motor Trade Association conference today, he said the emphasis is on turning around a “serious infrastructure deficit” as the regional and national benefits of well-performing transport corridors have a flow-on effect that is key to making us a competitive country on the global stage.

“So we’re giving high priority to projects that reflect the country’s transport realities while stimulating economic growth.”

The first step was to revise the government policy statement on transport funding to put economic growth at the fore and to better reflect the realities of how New Zealanders get around and how we transport our goods.

Priority had been given to advancing Roads of National Significance and the local roads critical to supporting them, as well as key freight and tourist routes. All needed work to reduce congestion, improve safety and support economic growth.

He gave as an example, the Tauranga Eastern Link will bring travel time savings of 12 minutes in each direction.  That’s per vehicle. A saving of 24 minutes on a return journey for trucks will mean, in some cases, allowing an extra return journey to be made a day.  Similar gains will be made as a result of work on State Highway One between Wellington Airport and Levin.  “This is one of the most challenging stretches of road and the transport agency is working hard on a long term strategic plan for that corridor now.”

He said the government’s next priority in this area was introducing measures designed to reduce the number of fatal and serious vehicle crashes involving young  people.

A package he will put to Cabinet early next year may include some of these measures, but not all:

• raising the driving age to 16 or 17
• extending the learner licence period to 12 months,
• strengthening the restricted licence test to encourage 120 hours of driving practice,
• raising awareness of young driver crash risk,
• increasing the benefits of professional driver training,
• increasing the benefit of school road safety education,
• impounding vehicles of those who breach licence conditions
• introducing vehicle restrictions and introducing third party insurance.
• “The government can’t control the actions of all young people behind the wheel, but we can do some things to curb the number of young people dying on our roads and we can learn from the experiences of other countries.”

* He didn’t mention rail as this was to a motor trade conference, whose delegates may not be aware there are trains in NZ. He has promised Cabinet will make a decision on Auckland rail electrification funding before the end of the year.