Iain
LEES-GALLOWAY
Transport Safety Spokesperson
22 November 2012 MEDIA STATEMENT
Government rapped for road safety failure

A new road risk assessment report out today highlights the folly - and danger - of National’s plan to forge ahead with its ‘holiday highway’, Labour’s Transport Safety Spokesperson Iain Lees-Galloway says.

“The latest KiwiRap report identifies State Highway 1, from Warkworth to WelIsford, as one of the country’s highest risk road, with 9 fatal and 17 serious crashes between 2007 and 2011.

“This stretch of road is included in the Government’s $1.7 billion-plus Puhoi to Wellsford Road of National Significance, which won’t be completed until 2022.

“That’s another 10 years of drivers having to run the gauntlet of a dangerous road.

“If the Government was serious about road safety it should put its obsession with building this RoNS to bed.

“History shows, however, that’s unlikely.

“It has already pulled 11 per cent from its road safety promotion budget and given short shrift to an alternative proposal put to it by the Campaign for Better Transport, which would have improved safety and thus saved lives at far less cost, and considerably sooner than 2022.

“It’s time National set aside its ideologically driven and nonsensical transport policy and started improving safety for all travellers, not just the chosen few whose needs are prioritised in the name of politics.

“If it can’t do that, then this Government must be replaced by one that is prepared to build a 21st century transport network that works for everyone,” Iain Lees-Galloway said.

ENDS

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