The Problem
The government spent $786 million on temporary traffic management over the three years preceding the reform initiative. Some of that spending was appropriate — managing genuine risks in genuine work zones. But a significant portion funded cone deployments that were, in Prime Minister Luxon’s description, entire roads shut down with no one doing any work. The underlying cause was not malice from contractors — it was a prescriptive Code of Practice that councils and contractors applied conservatively to manage their own liability, resulting in traffic management arrangements disproportionate to the actual work and risk involved.
The Hotline
The government launched a public hotline allowing road users to report what they believed were unnecessary or excessive road cone deployments. WorkSafe was tasked with managing the complaints and providing guidance to councils and contractors based on the patterns identified. Transport Minister Chris Bishop described the objective as a “common-sense approach” that would reduce disruption and taxpayer spending without compromising genuine safety requirements.
The hotline served two purposes: it provided data on where and how over-coning was occurring, and it created public accountability for cone deployment decisions that had previously been made invisibly by councils and contractors without feedback on their appropriateness.
The New Risk-Based Approach
The guidance developed through the hotline experience and NZTA engagement promotes a risk-based approach to traffic management: the controls deployed — cones, signs, speed restrictions, traffic control persons — should be proportionate to the actual hazard created by the specific work being performed. Low-risk, short-duration work on a quiet residential street does not require the same traffic management as a full-lane closure on a state highway.
For contractors, the practical shift is toward shorter-duration deployments, faster site establishment and removal, and greater use of remote-controlled signalling where physical traffic control persons are not required by the actual risk level. The economic incentive is aligned with the safety objective: less traffic management costs less money and takes less time to deploy and remove.
What Remains Non-Negotiable
The reform is not a directive to reduce safety. Work zones with genuine high-risk conditions — high-speed roads, multiple lanes of traffic, pedestrian exposure, complex site geometry — continue to require comprehensive traffic management. The requirement is that the management reflects the actual risk rather than the maximum possible risk at any notional site. Contractors who get this calibration right — who neither under-protect their workers nor impose unnecessary disruption on road users — are operating in the spirit of the reform and are protected by the guidance if an incident occurs despite appropriate precautions.
