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Petitioner given opportunity to make plea for urgent SH2 action
State Highway 2’s latest victim is in hospital recovering from a crash that happened less than three hours before a petition seeking action to fix the notorious road was presented to Parliament.
At 7.35am yesterday, Fix the Bloody Road campaigner Andrew Hollis was in Wellington preparing his thoughts before the 3350-signature petition, collected from locals worried about the number of serious and fatal crashes on the highway between Tauranga and Katikati, was presented.
At the same time on that very road, a car and a truck collided within sight of a collection of white crosses the campaigners had put up.
As Hollis made his way to Parliament, emergency services staff were rescuing a person trapped in the crashed car.
By the time Bay of Plenty National MP Todd Muller, with Hollis and MP Scott Simpson, presented the petition to the Transport Select Committee, which Transport Minister Phil Twyford labelled a “political stunt”, the moderately-injured person had been freed from the wreck and taken to Tauranga Hospital.
For Hollis, it was a timely reminder lives were at stake.
He said the timing of the crash added weight to the petition and was another example why the road needed to be fixed.
Muller gave up his speaking time in Parliament for Hollis, who addressed the select committee about the “dangerous” stretch of state highway.
“I reiterated how the community cringed every time the volunteer fire brigade sirens go off and that, as I was speaking, somebody was trapped inside a vehicle on that same road,” he said.
Hollis was thankful to have been allocated Muller’s speaking time in Parliament.
“It speaks volumes,” he said. “We definitely made our point.”
Twyford said the Government was striking the right balance in transport funding to create a modern, sustainable transport network and ensure all roads were safer.
“Nobody wants any more lives lost on this road and urgent safety improvements have already started,” he said.
“These safety improvements include speed management, road marking, signs, and enforcement, followed by infrastructure measures.”
Twyford said the New Zealand Transport Agency had reassessed the stretch of highway and would be able to create a four-lane road and make urgent safety improvements on a road “which has been neglected for a decade”.
“Our Government is spending