Subscribe to RSSFunding For Safer Journey Changes
The availability of funding for the government’s priority road safety initiatives - which are part of the Safer Journeys road safety strategy - has been confirmed with an amendment to the government policy statement on land transport funding.
The GPS sets out the government’s priorities for expenditure from the National Land Transport Fund by allocating funding through a range of activity classes.
The road safety initiatives outlined in Safer Journeys can now be funded by the NZTA through a new class, known as ‘road user safety’.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce says the minor changes will help with a number of road safety initiatives which will be implemented next year, including:
- the introduction of alcohol interlocks as a sentencing option for repeat and serious drink drive offenders (note the likely start date is 2012), which can also include the provision of alcohol assessments for these offenders
- the introduction of zero BAC licences for repeat offenders
- a survey by Police as to the actual harm caused by drink-drivers drivers with a BAC between 0.05 and 0.08
- motorcycle and moped licensing changes to improve safety - for example, the identification of motorcycles that are approved for learner riders (LAMS), and the proposed moped licence class
- young driver safety package.
The funding ranges for the ‘transport planning’ activity class have been altered to allow for an underspend in 2009/10, and savings predicted as a result of NZTA’s review of this activity class.
The activity class ‘demand management and community programmes’ contained a range of activities. This activity class has been renamed ‘road user safety’ and aligned to the Safer Journeys strategy. Some activities have been moved to other classes.
The scope of the new activity class called ‘road user safety’ includes community activities that make a significant contribution to safer road user behaviour, such as education, promotion, advertising and awareness campaigns. To enable funding, this now includes the Safer Journeys First Actions.
The community-based activities in the ‘road user safety’ activity class with no direct safety component have been moved to the ‘maintenance and operation of local roads’ activity class. These are largely activities targeted at relieving congestion, such as workplace, community and personal travel planning and household travel surveys.
Education and promotion activities for model communities (urban environments where walking or cycling is offered to the community as the easiest transport choice), and their funding, have been moved to the ‘walking and cycling facilities’ activity class. This enables these activities to be considered alongside the model communities infrastructure activities.
2 Comments
I wonder how many of the road safety initiatives would have saved the 14 people and the unborn baby last weekend?
“The community-based activities in the ‘road user safety’ activity class with no direct safety component have been moved to the ‘maintenance and operation of local roads’ activity class.”
In other words, Mr Joyce considers that demand management is a touchy-feely thing that at best, has LOCAL roads relevance. Curious, when the massive majority of, say, Auckland’s motorway traffic is of a decidedly local nature.
I could agree that demand management has no direct relevance to road safety, and thus can be shifted elsewhere - but sadly, with this minister I automatically suspect a reduction in funding for those measures.