New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins recently announced a wide range of policies would be either paused or cancelled entirely. While the PM was already intending a “back to basics” approach to governance, the recent, large-scale impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle kind of forced an acceleration of this mentality.
One of the casualties of this slash n’ burn is Waka Kotahi / NZTA’s “Road to Zero” campaign. And I am beyond thrilled to see this policy sent where it belongs: to the dustbin.
Several years ago, someone somewhere in New Zealand’s government got the “brilliant” idea that even one death on our roads was too many — ignoring the fact that driving a two-tonne steel box on a poorly maintained chipseal surface whilst surrounded on all sides by others doing exactly the same thing, except some of the other people in those other steel boxes might be busy playing Candy Crush on their phone instead of concentrating on driving, or they might be drunk, or they might just be flat out incapable of safely driving their conveyance due to simple incompetence. A strange notion, to be sure, given the truly comprehensive driver education programmes we have in New Zealand. Ahem.
Anyway, unwilling to accept that driving is an inherently risky activity that American congressman Ralph Nader described nearly 60 years ago as “unsafe at any speed”, Waka Kotahi came up with its “Road to Zero” policy. This, in a nutshell, aimed to reduce road deaths and serious injuries on New Zealand’s roads to zero.
A laudable goal, perhaps, if it weren’t also completely unachievable. But it’s something I could almost get behind if it were done the right way: say, with widespread improvements to the roads themselves, or mandatory driver education programmes, or really any driver education at all.
But instead, the entirety of Waka Kotahi’s plan was to reduce speed limits, nationwide. Their theory was as simple as it was simpleminded: if we make sure that people are travelling so slowly that they can’t possibly die even if they’re involved in a collision, then job done.
They started this initiative on the Napier-Taupo road (SH5), reducing the speed limit on the entirety of the road from its previous 100 kph down to 80 kph. It didn’t matter if the road was winding or straight, level or hilly, well-maintained or in shambles — whatever the condition of the road, or the weather, or your vehicle, or your own skill as a driver, you could never go faster than 80 on this road.
Waka Kotahi put on a show of consulting with the locals before enacting the speed limit changes, but despite strong and widespread opposition from people living on or otherwise regularly using SH5, Waka Kotahi ignored the feedback and enacted their speed limit changes anyway.
Then, in 2022, they did the same thing on SH2 between Featherston and Masterton in the Wairarapa, with the same sequence of events:
- Waka Kotahi held a public consultation
- The public told Waka Kotahi they would very much like them to not lower the speed limit
- Waka Kotahi ignored the public feedback and lowered the speed limits anyway.
I’ve worked in New Zealand government for nearly 10 years, so I know full well how a consultation is supposed to work. Councils and other government organisations almost always have their “preferred option” among several stated possibilities, and they will employ psychological tricks of varying degrees of complexity to try steering public sentiment toward that preferred option. But when or if public backlash against that preferred option is unmistakable in its intensity, a responsible organisation working within a democratic government should at the very least pause and re-examine its proposals if the will of the people is so obviously strong in its opposition.
Public feedback against the proposed speed limit change in the Wairarapa was both vociferous and fierce, and it went as high as the MP for the Wairarapa making a submission against it. But Waka Kotahi didn’t care about any of that, and they forged ahead with their speed limit changes. The residents of the Wairarapa fumed in anger, but no one really knew what, if anything, could be done to reverse these nonsensical and debilitating changes to our roads.
So, I submitted an Official Information Act request to Waka Kotahi asking them to supply all documentation relating to their consultation with the Wairarapa, and why they decided to forge ahead with their decision to lower the speed limit despite public outcry.
OIA requests don’t really give government entities a lot of wiggle room. They’re similar to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in the United States, but here in NZ these OIA requests have real teeth to them. I have been part of the responses to several OIAs as part of my work for NZ government, and they’re handled with great gravity and care. Knowing this, that’s why I submitted my OIA to Waka Kotahi in the first place: I knew this was perhaps the only way to pin them down to a response that their communications advisers and PR people couldn’t spin into obfuscated unintelligibility.
It took nearly a month, but the OIA response finally came back. Their response confirmed what I suspected:
- Waka Kotahi had no intention of exploring any other safety improvements for this road instead of speed reductions. Whether they made any other improvements or not was irrelevant to reducing the speed.
- Waka Kotahi had no intention of changing its stance on speed reductions, regardless of public feedback during the consultation periods. They explicitly noted in their OIA response that “consultations are not a vote” and wilfully ignored the will of the people living in this area and using this road every day. They also ignored feedback from our local MP, AA, and several local councils.
- The actual fatality and serious crash statistics for this road over the past 10 years are in reality very low for a road with the level of traffic it has. The relatively low numbers don’t support Waka Kotahi’s contention that the speed limit reductions are a necessary safety measure.
- Waka Kotahi rolled out these speed reductions on SH2 essentially as a test case for rolling out similar reductions across New Zealand.
I posted the results of this OIA in a Wairarapa Commuters Facebook group, and it set off a firestorm immediately. Within days, I had a reporter from the Wairarapa Times-Age contact me for comment, and two articles about the issue went in that newspaper over the following week.
One of the other tidbits from Waka Kotahi’s OIA release was that speeds between Greytown and Featherston weren’t reduced because of any real safety issues; rather, the speed was reduced “for consistency” with the other speed reductions made on SH2. Once our local MP became aware of this, he declared that he was going to put pressure on Waka Kotahi to reverse this change.
Now, the PM has stepped in and seriously curtailed the programme. He said there would be a “significant narrowing of the speed reduction programme to focus on the most dangerous 1% of state highways, and ensuring Waka Kotahi are consulting meaningfully with affected communities“, and this would mean that “speed limits will reduce in the places where there are the highest numbers of deaths and injuries and where local communities support change“(emphasis added).
The open question now is whether or not Waka Kotahi will see fit to reverse the two speed reduction programmes it has already enacted on SH5 and SH2. It’s honestly a moot point whether they reverse the changes on SH5; thanks to widespread damage in that area from Cyclone Gabrielle, SH5 essentially no longer exists now. But SH2 does, and many Wairarapa residents — myself included — are waiting to see whether Waka Kotahi backs down under pressure from us, our MP, or even the PM.
When the reporter from the Wairarapa Times-Age contacted me for comment on Waka Kotahi’s OIA response, he wasn’t able to publish most of my responses due to journalistic restrictions. I’m under no such strictures, so here are my responses to his questions.
Why did you submit the OIA?
Waka Kotahi hasn’t been particularly transparent or forthcoming about how and why it reached its conclusion that speed reductions on SH2 were a necessary safety measure. I hoped to get more insight into what, if any, alternatives it had explored and why those had been rejected in favour of speed reductions. I also wanted to find out what weight (if any) it gave to the many, many submissions that came out against the speed reductions not only from members of the general public, but also from local MP Kieran McAnulty, the AA, and local councils and businesses.
In short, I wanted to know why Waka Kotahi decided these speed reductions were necessary, how it came to that conclusion, and why it chose not to respect the will of the communities that said we do not want them to proceed.
What do you think is the most important/revealing information in the OIA response?
The most revealing aspect of the OIA response from Waka Kotahi confirmed what I had suspected: Waka Kotahi never made any good faith moves toward exploring road safety measures instead of speed reductions; any suggested roading improvements were always intended to be in addition to the speed reductions.
Waka Kotahi also never made any serious gestures toward taking into consideration the substantially negative public feedback toward its proposed speed limit changes. They noted in their strategy documents the risk of negative public sentiment, but they never expressed any intention, even at the planning stage, of respecting public opinion on this matter.
Why do you feel that the speed limit reductions are unjustified?
SH2 is a straight, wide, level road with good visibility and a generally good road surface. It is the main arterial route connecting Wairarapa communities to Wellington and the Tararua and Manawatū districts, and it is in the best interest of everyone living in this region that this route is one that’s efficient to travel.
There were only 4 fatal crashes and 26 serious crashes on this road in the 10 years from 2010 to 2019. Both of these are very low numbers for a road that, according to some estimates, can see as many as 14,000 vehicles travelling it per day. It is a textbook example of what a 100 km/h road in New Zealand should look like.
Reducing the speed on this road to 80 km/h is a nonsensical move that will only lead to increased driver frustration and distraction, and it is likely to have the opposite effect from what Waka Kotahi intends: more crashes, not fewer.
How do you feel about the Waka Kotahi consultation process?
Waka Kotahi explicitly stated in their response that “consultations are not a vote”, which tells me the entire consultation was just a box-ticking exercise, and Waka Kotahi never had any intention of adjusting its plans no matter the nature of the feedback or who it came from.
This is not unique to Waka Kotahi — central and local government organisations generally have a “preferred option” in their consultations and rarely waver from that unless there is sufficient risk to the organisation to justify changing its stance. But in this particular instance, Waka Kotahi has been pretty blatant in its stance toward public feedback on its strategy — they definitely hear us asking them not to do this, but they definitely do not care.
What do you think Waka Kotahi should do differently in their consultation process?
Waka Kotahi says they do not apply any statistical weighting to their consultation responses, which I find absolutely baffling and bordering on an abdication of its responsibilities as a public service organisation. I have worked in both local and central government, and I have been directly involved in a multitude of public consultations, and I have never heard of a consultation going out that didn’t have some kind of statistical analysis done on responses — until now.
At a bare minimum, Waka Kotahi should be doing a basic level of analysis on its responses to at least get an idea of public sentiment for or against its proposals. That it failed to do so strongly indicates that public feedback simply does not matter at all to Waka Kotahi, and it is only exercising the minimum legally required level of effort in the consultation process.
Ideally — given that New Zealand is a democratic nation — public feedback on proposals like these should be taken under advisement, with strategies adjusted when or if public sentiment is strong enough. Consultations may not be a vote, but if the outcome of the consultation is pre-determined no matter what the public says, then the consultation itself is a farce.
What safety improvements do you think would be better than a speed limit reduction?
I have no objection to any of the other safety improvements Waka Kotahi has proposed. Putting up barriers between opposing lanes seems sensible, as does replacing high-risk intersections with roundabouts.
If money were no object, I would say SH2 should be widened to two lanes each way with a barrier median separating opposing traffic. As people are increasingly getting priced-out of home ownership in the Wellington and Hutt Valley areas, there are increasing numbers of westbound commuters moving to the Wairarapa — so in the long term, it would be far more sensible to make improvements to SH2 that increase travel efficiency between our region and Wellington. The speed limit reductions instead reduce travel efficiency for thousands of people, each way, every day.
What do you think of Road to Zero?
I think Road to Zero is a fundamentally misguided strategy that will not and cannot achieve its stated goals.
I used to work in radiation health physics, and one of the cornerstone principles of that field is the concept of ALARA: keeping workers’ exposure to radiation doses As Low As Reasonably Achievable. The key word here is reasonable. We could have taken measures to ensure that workers were exposed to zero radiation, but many of those measures would have led to decreased worker safety in other areas.
An ALARA approach is called for with respect to road safety as well: keep road deaths and serious crashes As Low As Reasonably Achievable. Road to Zero is not a reasonable strategy; the only way to truly ensure zero road deaths is to outlaw road travel altogether.
Waka Kotahi’s singleminded, tunnel-vision focus on speed reductions is only going to lead to driving in this country becoming both a chore and a bore. Bored drivers become distracted drivers, and distracted drivers become dangerous drivers — increasing the risk for everyone else on the road. Creating artificial inefficiencies in our roading network will also have additional economic impacts that we quite frankly cannot afford to bear right now with everything else that’s going on economically.
Yes, it is tragic when people die on our roads. No one is denying that. But taking a hardline stance and saying we must have zero deaths when many thousands of people are engaging in an inherently risky activity every day is neither reasonable nor achievable. Road to Zero makes zero sense.