Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand

Incredibly disappointed is the only way to describe how I feel about the Government’s recent announcement on the fate of roading projects in the

New Zealand Upgrade Programme.

Firstly, the good news is that the 24 kilometre highway from Otaki to north of Levin, costing around $817million, will be built as planned. Wellington’s Melling Interchange will also go ahead at a higher cost – now estimated at $420m, having been costed at $258m just a year ago.

The bad news from a road transport point of view is that the Mill Road project in Auckland will not go ahead – due to reprioritisation and concern over future transport emissions. 

This again proves the Gover...

There’s nothing like seeing a bunch of Kiwi athletes with some nice, shiny medals at an Olympic Games.

After all the hard work, all the physical and emotional endurance, all the support of friends and families, it’s a magical thing. Even to get to the Olympics is such an enormous achievement.

Back on the less elevated level of day-to-day life, our industry has been having some decent wins, and business as usual continues at pace.

Late July we had an historic day at our organisation with the Board formally adopting a new constitution and governance structure.

The new constitution introduces a single national membership structure, supported by r...

The state of the economy is top of mind this month, following the delivery of the budget by the coalition government on May 30. The government says it can turn around the economy. We hope it is right, and we will see some positive changes happening soon.

Stress on the rise for operators

Right now, however, it is clear that we are facing tough economic times, as predicted, and unfortunately this is impacting the road transport industry in particular.

A major player went into liquidation recently with absolutely no warning. A recent report in Stuff described how the transport industry is leading the statistics for insolvencies – disqu...

It was great to attend the opening ceremony of the Fairfield Road Rail Freight Hub, which was officially opened by Transport Minister Simeon Brown on April 19.

Congratulations to the leadership of the Wareing Group, with the support and commitment of the local council, KiwiRail, and the previous and current governments. 

One of the things that I have been concerned about previously are government policies to drive modal shift for the sake of achieving some arbitrary mode share distribution. The Fairfield Freight Hub demonstrates that the big issue is transport, not just modal share.

The Fairfield Freight Hub is a great demonstration of thinking ...

Last month, the government announced it was scrapping Road to Zero. It may be controversial, but I think that was the right move. Here’s why.

Road to Zero was launched with much fanfare in 2019 and it set an interim target of a 40 per cent reduction in deaths and serious injuries by 2030 against a 2018 baseline. That meant the road toll in 2030 would equate to 227 deaths.

The graph below shows how things were actually tracking as we approached halfway. I don’t think even the most optimistic person would suggest things were on track. 

There have been mixed reactions to the government scrapping it but given that the programme was so far off track ...