Pothole Repair Fund: National announces $500m road transport policy
National is pledging to pour $500 million over three years into a Pothole Repair Fund to address what it calls the “shocking state of our local roads and state highways”.
How dumb are all of you?
I’m serious.
How.
Dumb.
Are.
All.
Of.
You?
I fear that the debate around potholes has become as ignorant as the debate around law and order.
Remember how I said that the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of you had no idea that National’s desire to rub dog shit into the faces of prisoners by forcing them to admit their guilt before they can access rehabilitation was causing a feedback loop that only made things worse?
The vast majority of you had NO IDEA that was the case, and I feel like the vast majority of you have nob idea that the pot hole issue is again ANOTHER National Party funding failure!
National slashed the roading budgets in 2013 and were told when they did that it would generate an enormous deterioration of our roads that would take a decade to fix! Well, Labour are fixing it!
Back in 2010, it was Steven Joyce who increased the weight of trucks in a capitulation to the trucking industry…
Change lifts truck load limit to 53 tonnes
Up to 5000 trucks will be eligible to carry heavier loads on public highways from next month.
The change has raised concerns about motorists’ safety from the Automobile Association and the Green Party, which are also worried about damage to roads from the juggernauts.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce has announced that trucks carrying up to 53 tonnes will be allowed on specific routes from May 1, subject to the new permit system.
Even heavier rigs would be allowed “in very specific instances”.
The nine-tonne increase on the standard limit of 44 tonnes is the equivalent to the weight of nine small cars.
Green Party transport spokesman Gareth Hughes said trucks were already involved in 16 per cent of all road fatalities despite comprising only 4 per cent of the vehicle fleet.
“Bigger trucks have got more mass, more weight – that means worse accidents.”
…it was National who lifted the weights of Trucks which do so much damage to the roading network but the Right always like to pretend they didn’t do that!
So National underfunded roads when in power so much so that it caused a decades worth of damage and they allowed their Trucking industry mates to carry vastly heavier trucks that destroyed the roads and National’s ‘solution’ is to take half a billion out of road safety budget to fill in the potholes their previous underfunding caused!!!!
Climate Change washing away our roads, National’s underfunding, National’s green lighting heavier trucks and the mad decision to shut down Marsden Point so we don’t have the material to fix the roads with have all combined here and Labour are only responsible for the Marsden Point decision.
Look, attack Labour for the shit they do, but those potholes are National’s legacy you clowns, NOT Labour’s!
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You might be right
The Tories want people to believe they’re “pro-road”, but they’re really just miserably stingy.
Why did they increase semi-trailer sizes? Because they nearly destroyed the rail network! (A requirement of a modern advanced economy, but they don’t want the befuddled little villagers to know that!)
Did they have any grand plan for the decrepit metropolitan freeway network, or the even more backward inter-provincial highway system? No, their “plan” was to leave them all stuck in the 1940s!
And have the Tories ever proposed to turn the 16 Bn. ton domestic coal reserve into 22 Bn. barrels of oil via C.T.L. gasification, giving drivers endless gasoline at $2.00 per gal. instead of $7.00+?
Totally agree, my initial thoughts are that we have record rainfall yet national is in climate change denial, as you mentioned they lifted the truck’s weight which also causes more damage yet they seem to think they are doing something good by allowing to repair they damage they caused.
Regardless of who is responsible they need to be fixed – hit one on the way into work this morning literally while hearing about all of this on National Radio.
Potholes used to be a rarity but now all over the place around where I live.
You might be right except Labour and the Greens have turned what was formerly NZTA into the party political ideology wing known as Waka KotahI.
And if you want pure sophistry then you can’t go past the Greens “Road to Zero”. A page out of the urban bike lobby activism page, this has fuck all to do with the impossible goal of zero road deaths (unless a 100% ban on motor vehicles is their ultimate goal) and everything to do with making travel as difficult as they can so we convert to their religion. Road to Zero is a lie wrapped in the truth. We are supposed to migrate to cargo bikes and wear hand knitted jumpers and grow beards living in our Anglo Saxon villages worshipping the sun gods. Hence routine closures of the harbour bridge, fanatical speed limit restrictions and judder bars everywhere.
In fact Waka Kotahi have gone so full ideological that they’ve banned one of Labours very few achievements, the Hamilton Auckland rail link, from entering Aucklands rail network out of an over abundance of caution to keep us “safe” after two trains ran a red lights. WTAF? Its funny that their love child of sophistry had turned into a monster biting them in the arse.
So yes, Nationals giant trucks are not helping, the closure of Marsden Point unspeakably stupid, but nor is the government department whose former role was to ensure the nations roading network kept moving but now is a party political abomination that like the rest of the government departmens under this government, unable to do anything well!
” Nationals giant trucks are not helping”… Well mr genius, if you were alive, or cognizant in 1981. you may have noticed some very quiet talk on the radio regarding the “Transport Amendment Act 1980”. which was enacted in 1981… This act removed the distance limits for heavy trucking over the whole country… This coincided with the onset of a new wave of attacks on the labour movement, topped off with a blunt admission of the tories true economic incompetence courtesy of a completely self defeating “wage and price freeze” , which dragged out until the change of government in 1984…. The fact that every tory administration since has starved the road network of the funds needed to maintain roads that are now deteriorating at an exponentially faster rate as a direct consequence of those actions, and inactions, are not “contributing factors”… They are at the core of the problem, and it’s one that will only get more expensive the more absurd, and dangerously congested the transport grid gets…
Time to stop making specious excuses for the deliberate sabotage of NZs ability to function in a rational way…. These incompetents paved the way for the great traitor, Douglas to bring Thatcherism to NZ under the cover of the massive adjustments necessary as the aftermath of the Muldoon/Birch years “hit like a truck”,, so to speak..
I recall the limitations of rail in the good ol’days, Mr Smarty Pants. It was an inefficient ineffective joke.
And what has 1980’s wage and price freezes got to do with potholes? Muldoon’s government was left of left.
And which government, Einstein, cancelled the next highway phase north of Warkworth, you know, the section that bypassed the horrendous slip riddled fatal Dome Valley? Labour!
Anyone with even an ounce of intelligence knows this is National election campaigning 101.
Roading and tax cuts are the go to policies and have been for decades.
Not only did they cut roading funding and increased tonnage but they also used a quick fix low budget bitumen from China to cut costs. Now with a bit of water on our roads and heavy trucks, wallah! Potholes.
But…speed bumps cost 300k per road bump and Labour wants these everywhere so cars can travel between 20 and 80 so we can achieve the 0 road toll.
Even hydro cars can’t travel that slow and even a… Green party member on a push bikes can’t travel that slow.
National won’t be able to operate on a reduced reading budget in future. Nor can Labour blame what Happened 6 years ago.
Pot Holes are an annoyance for voters.
Indeed. An absolutely disgusting boondoggle.
It should be noted that speed bumps damage tyres just as potholes do if you drive over them at any reasonable speed. The clowns behind Road to Zero are the lowest scum.
Mohammed Khan: What do you mean by reasonable speed? The recommended speed for driving over speed bumps/humps is usually between 10 to 25 kph (or less if you want to be sure of protecting your vehicle). Why is that difficult to comply with? Surely you can make your own judgement. Why do people in NZ have a compulsion to speed?
Why do many drivers in NZ feel compelled to follow too closely or tailgate, when the vehicles they are following are being driven at the recommended speed, or less if there are extenuating conditions? Why do many NZ drivers fail to indicate?
Some/many? people behave aggressively or carelessly when driving, presumably due to a sense of entitlement to do what they want to, without caring about the safety of others.
The article in this link might help you to understand why measures are taken to control the speed of NZ drivers.
https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/road-safety/speed/
Try to understand that under normal conditions roads do not need maintenance every year, National spent 9 years underfunding roads so depending on road use they will either have needed repair or be due for repair by now. The government has been spending record amounts on repairs but record rainfall explains why there are so many problem roads still.
Expect nothing more from the Pot Party.
“We filled 50000 potholes!” without saying how much it cost.
“”We will fill potholes with 500000000!” without saying how many.
So good to see multi-party commited to solve the most important problem this country has ever faced. Pothole invasion must be stopped.
I thought the reason so many are living in their cars was due to chronic housing shortage, but now it seems the reason must be so that they don’t have to drive over the 1000’s of pot holes on their way to work, school or whatever.
I am sooooo happy that the anti co-governance promoters have their priorities sorted for the next 3 years – No more potholes, and tax cuts for the wealthy. WOW !!!!!!!!!
Nationals’ pothole policy is a plaster fix no more than that I have seen potholes fixed only for them to be back within a fortnight better to fix the road. This is what happens when you neglect things when Key gave the rich those big tax cuts costing our country us billions, he asked his Ministers to do more with less and they did less. Our roads were just one of the many sacrifices as was our schools, hospitals, welfare system, universities to name a few.
Nationals’ pothole policy is a plaster fix no more than that I have seen potholes fixed only for them to be back within a fortnight better to fix the road. This is what happens when you neglect things when Key gave the rich those big tax cuts costing our country us billions, he asked his Ministers to do more with less and they did less. Our roads were just one of the many sacrifices as was our schools, hospitals, welfare system, universities to name a few.
Clearly u don’t drive.
Ahhh… govt policy is being generated by social media now. What an effing joke. Maybe someone should show them a map of China’s high speed rail network.
The fact that Shell, BP, and Mobil- all foreign companies- were allowed to destroy the Marsden Point refinery is a key part of the problem. You can keep filling potholes with inferior foreign bitumen and it won’t do jack. The foreign oil companies need to have their profits seized to pay for rebuilding the refinery- which was built with our money in the first place, under a far more visionary government than we’ve seen in decades.
You’re absolutely right – the country has to be mad to allow this – but I read somewhere that the Marsden Point refinery was trashed and closed at the behest of Blackrock Inc. David Lange’s witty repartee on meeting a globalist, however, sadly lacking; “I can smell the uranium on your breath, Sir,” being replaced with something like “Yes, your royal highness, how high again?”
Didn’t we, on taking power, promptly cancel $9 billion of roading projects the Nats had budgeted for and squander it on woke vanity projects. Several, like the $50 mill bike lane on the bridge, subsequently quietly canned. Let’s just admit it. The folk representing us ordinary blokes in parliament are bloody useless dreamers.
Please when we next get into power have some adults in the room with real life experiences.
Maybe the Nats have worked it out that the amount of blinking road cones put up around the place causing visual and environmental pollution, especially when the cones make it into the nearest drain/waterway and doing little for road safety, that the money saved on road cone production can be put into actually fixing roads
100% agree Bomber.
It’s OK, they can sell the $500M in surplus RAT tests to pay for it.
Don’t think fixing potholes will offset Nationals low wage economy(nurses and teachers recognise this), dismantling of Kiwisaver, increasing retirement age, giving a $2 a week tax bribe and selling off more state owned assets.
If you want to return to a Nact government who gave us the worst 9 years of government in our history, the above is what you’ll get.
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