An open letter to the transport minister

After a fatal accident on State Highway 3 north of New Plymouth and the revelation that, after a year of waiting, road repairs on SH3 near Lake Mangamahoe could take another 12 months, New Plymouth Mayor Neil Holdom has penned an open letter to transport minister Phil Twyford.

Dear Minister Twyford,

I am writing to express my concerns about the safety and condition of the State Highway network around New Plymouth district and in particular about the lack of progress addressing the risks between Waitara and Bell Block and repairing the damaged culvert near Egmont Village.

While I acknowledge the New Zealand Transport Agency have done some good work talking to our community, socialising ideas and communicating, where they have fallen down is in demonstrating a sense of urgency, making final decisions and getting the diggers rolling.

When I have raised these concerns with NZTA the general tone of their replies has been that they will address these issues in their own time, which, in the view of many in our community, has been painfully slow.

In the meantime we have a range of temporary bits of orange plastic, road cones, a lot of road signs and rapidly growing transport volumes leading to crashes every couple of weeks, many extremely serious, and unfortunately too often fatal.

Minister I invite you to visit Taranaki to drive sections of State Highway 3 with me during peak traffic conditions to get a feel for the nature of the issues we are dealing with.

I would like you to understand that at a personal level I have changed the route I drive to and from the city each day and my wife has done the same to avoid State Highway 3 between Bell Block and Waitara because of the volume of crashes which occur.

We are lucky we can avoid this highway most of the time. However many of our people can not and so are exposed to this risk on a daily basis.

Exiting our airport road to drive to the city is perceived by a number of our businesses as one of the highest risk activities their staff are exposed to in their day-to-day working environments.

Unfortunately, your team have not met their commitments to timeframes on finalising a plan for these safety issues and the question I would ask you is how many more people must be seriously injured or die before the team at NZTA prioritises work in Taranaki?

My understanding is that we have three of New Zealand’s 100 most dangerous intersections along little more than a 10km stretch of road that your team have been ‘thinking’ about for many years but we still do not have a detailed design and no approved budget. We still do not have a timeframe for works to begin, we still do not have a clear view of what improvements will form the final plan nor when they will finish.

Minister, please accept my apology for the fact this open letter is my first formal communication with you. I have been trying to work through NZTA but have given up.

I am sorry if this letter is a little tainted by emotion, but the daughter of close friends nearly lost her life on this road a couple of years ago and I thought NZTA were going to do something about it then.

She had her skull fractured when a car T-boned the vehicle she was travelling in, shunting it into the path of an oncoming truck.

Her head was smashed into the head of another child also sitting in the back of the car. Fortunately she survived thanks to the work of the amazing Fire Service, police and medical crews who are so used to racing out on to our highways to pick up the pieces. Fortunately she was one of the lucky ones.

Unfortunately our people are being killed and seriously injured on this section of highway with alarming regularity.

Minister, I realise you have only been in the job nine months and cannot be held responsible for issues predating your appointment.

However you can determine what happens next and that is my appeal to you.

I formally invite you to New Plymouth to drive the highway with me during peak traffic.

I also ask that you instruct your team to fast-track safety improvements to our highway north of the city and then also arrange repairs to the road at Egmont Road where the culvert washed out 12 months ago.

Minister Twyford, I know you are a busy man doing your best for the country.

Please spare a little time for the people in Taranaki. You will be welcomed warmly and your assistance is most desperately required.

Our people are being killed and seriously injured on this section of highway with alarming regularity.