Roads and transport in Northland: three big opportunities

from Our Roads & Transport 2020

by Northern Advocate

Ripple Effect –the continuing road toll in Northland

Roads and transport in Northland:

THREE BIG OPPORTUNITIES

Quite rightly, many Northlanders will look at the safety, resilience and ‘customer experience’of their transport network and feel they’re getting a rough deal.

The next government is going to have to show Northland’s transport system more ‘love’. In part, that means grappling with some of the massive, complex infrastructure issues the region faces, but it also means a strong focus on the projects that can be advanced more quickly, without the eye-watering costs or thorny politics.

Here are three initiatives the AA wants brought to the front of the queue. We see them as an excellent opportunity to deliver transport benefits where Northland desperately needs them, in a way that corresponds with what local motorists want to see from their fuel tax.

1Invest in road maintenance

Road maintenance has been badly neglected right around the country over the last decade, and Northland has been at the sharp end of it. As investment has fallen in real terms, road surfaces on more and more of the network are now in urgent need of repair.

When it comes to the safety of road surfaces, skid resistance and roughness are the key measures. In Northland, 30% of driving takes place on roads with sub-standard skid resistance (compared to 20% nationally) and 7% of the network exceeds what’s considered an acceptable level of roughness (compared to 5%nationally).

This helps explain why Northland is the area where AA Members are most negative about the condition of their roads. In an AA survey earlier this year, over 70% of Northland respondents rated road conditions in their region as very poor or sub-standard, versus 33% nationally.

In the AA’s view, the Government is missing a trick by not using the Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund to invest in road maintenance, not just to make safer, better quality roads, but also to stimulate economic activity. Road maintenance projects areagreat way to generate lots of jobs, quickly and costeffectively, right around the country.

In Northland, some obvious candidates

would be SH1 north of Hikurangi, SH14 Whangarei-Dargaville, and the road around Broadwood, just to name a few.

2More testing to detect drunk and drugged drivers

Alcohol and drug impairment continues to have a massive impact on New Zealand’s road toll (about one in three fatal crashes involve drunk or drugged drivers) and, sadly, Northland is over-represented. In 2019, Northland had the highest rate of road deaths and serious injuries involving drunk drivers in New Zealand, on a per capita basis; for drugged driving, Northland had the second-highest rate of deaths and serious injuries per capita.

Large-scale testing of drivers for alcohol or drugs is essential if Police are to catch impaired drivers, or deter them from getting behind the wheel in the first place. Unfortunately, this too is an area where things are heading in the wrong direction.

Ifyou feel like you don’t see as many booze buses or Police checkpoints as you used to, you’re right. Across the country, the number of alcohol tests Police carry out each year has dropped from three million in 2013 to less than two million. Meanwhile, the tools exist to test drivers for drugs like marijuana and methamphetamine (through saliva testing), but it’s still not clear when Police will be given the power to use them.

From the incoming government, the AA wants a commitment to restore alcohol testing numbers to their previous high levels and to introduce a new roadside drug testing regime by Police as soon as possible.

3Youth licensing

A sizeable chunk of young people around New Zealand are driving without the proper licence. In some cases they don’t have a licence at all; in others they’ve got a learner or restricted licence but have never taken the next step.

The issue is about much more than a person’s legal right to be on the road – it’s about their participation in society. Not having a driver’s licence can prevent someone from opening a bank account, taking out an insurance policy or, in many cases, applying forajob.

All too often, it can also mean clogging the justice system. Driving without a proper licence is one of the most common offences for young people, and can quickly snowball into unpaid fines, further charges and a longterm relationship with the law.

AA research shows that, when it comes to young people driving without a licence or in breach of a learner’s licence, Northland has higher rates of offending than the national average, and has the highest rate of offenders’ unpaid fines being sent to court.

The Government needs to fund a large-scale, nationwide programme to help young people that would otherwise struggle to get a driver’s licence (bringing together the multiple smaller groups that are already doing excellent work in this space). In Northland, this needs to include greater access to driver licence testing facilities.

This is all-the-more relevant as the economy battles back from Covid-19. Northland already has one of the highest rates of youth not in employment, education or training (NEETs), and this is predicted to surge as the economic impacts bite. Young people will need to give themselves every possible chance to access work opportunities, and that means being legally able to drive.

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