Road Cone Crackdown 'Gathers Pace', Presumably Through a 30km/h Zone

The Government announced this week that its road cone crackdown is gathering pace. Councils are now required to adopt risk-based temporary traffic management, which is official language for asking whether seventeen cones and two men holding a stop sign are strictly necessary to repaint a kerb.

NZTA reports it has already saved $46 million by taking this approach. This is presented as good news, and it is, in the way that finding your wallet is good news after several years of not looking for it. The $46 million was previously being spent on traffic management that, by the Government’s own accounting, was not managing any particular risk.

The cones themselves could not be reached for comment, though several thousand of them remain stationed on roads around the country, guarding nothing, awaiting orders that may never come.