A national seminar focusing on better road and traffic incident management will be held in Rotorua on March 17-18 with some international experts on this subject expected to attend.
The seminar is being supported by the national Road and Traffic Incident Management (RTIM) Group which includes NZ Police, NZ Fire Service, St John, NZ Transport Agency, Automobile Association and the Road Transport Forum. Traffic incident management refers to unplanned events that cause temporary or reduced access to roads such as crashes, flooding, slips and winter weather, which vary in their impacts. “The impacts can be significant on the travelling public, local residents and the wider community. Delays result in loss travel time and can be an added cost to businesses and transport operators,” says Ken Shirley, CEO, Road Transport Forum. “Providing an appropriate response, effective and safe on-scene management and quick clearance are the objectives we are trying to achieve by holding such seminars. It helps us to identify ways to effectively work together to ensure we reduce the impacts to those affected by the event,” says Inspector Peter Baird, National Advisor Policy and Legislation: Road Policing. “We can achieve this by planning and formalising incident response plans and programmes and coordinating across agencies”. AA spokesperson Jayne Gale says "Emergency services and contractors do incredible work dealing with life and death situations and often challenging conditions on our roads every day.” "At the same time, it is important for the wider community that the roads are cleared as quickly as possible and that people caught up in any delays get useful information about what is happening, diversion routes and what they need to do," says Jayne Gale. The seminar will cover a wide range of topics from policy and strategies through to on road incident management procedures. “There will be 19 guest speakers who will discuss road and traffic incident management from various perspectives with plenty of case studies,” says Alan Burkett, NZ Transport Agency who is the Seminar convenor. Some of the speakers include the United States National Traffic Incident Management Coalition and the Queensland Department of Main Roads. More information about attending this seminar go to www.rtimnz.co.nz
