Have your say on the draft policy statement on NZ land transport strategy

The government is drafting its 10-year Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport and is inviting feedback from the transport sector. The 2018-2028 GPS, which comes into effect on 1 July 2018, is important as it impacts the safety of our road systems and the safety of our users.

The policy sets out the long-term view of the government’s priorities and how it plans to allocate spending from the National Land Transport Fund between activities such as road safety policing, state highways, local roads and public transport.

The transport sector is a major contributor to the Fund in the form of RUC and petrol taxes as well as being heavy users of our roads and highways.

The focus of the draft Policy Statement is on:

• putting the right infrastructure in place to support high growth urban areas
• supporting the regions – and local economies
• improving how freight moves on our network by focussing on high quality and resilient connections, road building and maintenance.
• resilience to ensure that our network is resilient and disruption minimised in the face of shocks and challenges – like responding to earthquakes or catering for increasing numbers of tourists using our transport network.
• improving road safety based on the Safer Journeys Strategy 2010-2020
• conversations with the sector, learnings from recent events and challenges globally as well as locally guided how we update our approach to support economic growth and

There is a lot of money to be spent, amounting to over $4 billion each year, so be sure to give your views and make comment on where the spending priorities should lie. You can find the draft policy statement here.

Vehicle fleet managers, dispatchers and drivers will be interested in the emphasis the draft Policy Statement places on safer journeys which includes providing users with accurate and timely information to make safe and smart driving choices, ensuring high risk roads are identified and encouraging vehicle safety with accelerated update of new technologies.

The transport sector can influence the policy and also play its part in working for the public good by providing valuable advice and insights to contribute to the plans to make roads and driving safer for everyone using the land transport network across New Zealand.

So have your say.

The Ministry of Transport is inviting stakeholders to provide comment now with the 5-week engagement period closing at 5pm on Friday 31 March 2017. You can provide feedback on the draft GPS 2018 by:

Emailing gps2018@transport.govt.nz or

Writing to: Attn: GPS Policy Team, Ministry of Transport, PO Box 3175, WELLINGTON 6140