Our customers want a safe, affordable and reliable system that’s easy to get around and gives them choices about how they travel. They want a socially and environmentally responsible system with joined up services and reliable information. Our key challenges include being able to prioritise and sustainably fund what we need to deliver now and in the future. We successfully laid some strong foundations for our future state and aspirations this year, but must prepare for more changes in our information, technological, economic, social and physical environments.
A key part of our organisational foundations is focusing on our people. By ensuring we attract and retain great talent, we can continue delivering the best outcomes for New Zealanders. The section on Our organisation, describes the actions we’re taking to support our aspiration of being a good employer and a great place to work. These include promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace, and prioritising the health, safety and wellbeing of our people.
We’re responsible for managing investment of the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF) to deliver on government and regional priorities. Waka Kotahi must build strong partnerships and work with many agencies and organisations to deliver land transport outcomes for New Zealanders.
This year was the final year of the 2018–21 NLTP, and the NLTF was fully utilised. Expenditure in two activity classes was below their GPS ranges: rapid transit (principally due to delayed progress of Auckland Light Rail) and road safety promotion and demand management (only slightly below target). Both approved organisation-led and Waka Kotahi-led road safety promotional activities activity class were affected by COVID-19, resulting in reduced promotional activities. State highway maintenance was slightly above the target on a pre-financing basis.
This year we finalised our Investment Prioritisation Method following wide consultation with and feedback received from councils, transport and sector groups, and our people. Investment prioritisation is undertaken when a proposed activity, or combination of activities, is put forward for inclusion in an NLTP. Our Investment Prioritisation Method is being used this year to give effect to the GPS 2021 in the 2021–24 NLTP.
This year we launched our new strategic direction Te kāpehu, which has a vision of connecting people, products and places for a thriving Aotearoa. Te kāpehu includes a new set of values and behaviours that we developed with our people and are working on embedding across Waka Kotahi. In June 2021 we finalised our new performance framework, which will help us track our progress toward realising the vision of Te kāpehu. Our new performance framework is aligned to the Transport outcomes, GPS 2021 and our other internal strategies and plans, including Toitū te taiao our sustainability action plan, Tū ake, tu māia our regulatory strategy and Arataki our 10-year plan. Te kāpehu and our new performance framework is included in our refreshed statement of intent for 2021–26 and statement of performance expectations for 2021/22.
The Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) is critical for people’s safety on our roads and to keep them moving. This system helps to manage planned and unplanned traffic events on motorways, regional roads, and in our numerous tunnels and bridges across the country. All roadside devices including cameras, variable message and speed signs, weather data, the health and safety systems in tunnels, and a whole lot more connect to our ATMS. We need to upgrade ATMS to ensure its ongoing reliability and remove the risk of it failing. We achieved many milestones in the ATMS upgrade this year with operational testing of new system software underway and new infrastructure in place, including two data centre services in Auckland and Wellington.
