The National Land Transport Programme (NLTP) contains all the land transport activities, such as public transport services and road construction and maintenance, which are expected to receive funding from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency. Waka Kotahi is responsible for allocating funding to land transport.
The 2008/09 NLTP sets out the significant transport issues facing land transport and lists the transport activities that have been given funding from the National Land Transport Fund and also those that may be funded during 2008/09. It sets out forecasts of anticipated expenditure and revenue over 10 years.
The Authority’s Land Transport Programme (ALTP) for the 2007/08 year provides funding for the NZ Police only and is therefore now referred to as the road policing programme (RPP). It is prepared by Land Transport NZ and approved by the Minister of Transport in accordance with section 12A of the Land Transport Management Act 2003 (LTMA).
Land Transport NZ education activities, which were included with NZ Police activities for consultation purposes are, as from 2007/08, to be funded through the research, education and training (RET) programme which is described on pages 159 to 163 of this NLTP.
The RPP has been developed in order to support the achievement of the New Zealand Transport Strategy (NZTS), particularly through its contribution to the goals of the government’s Road Safety to 2010 Strategy.
The inclusion of the RPP in the NLTP integrates the planning and funding of road policing or enforcement with education and engineering, as well as with other NLTP activities.
In preparing the RPP, Land Transport NZ took into account the NZTS and LTMA objectives for land transport, the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, regional land transport strategies and the Road Safety to 2010 Strategy in which the government’s road safety goals for New Zealand are to reduce the number of road deaths to no more than 300 per year and hospitalisations to no more than 4,500 per year by 2010. Road deaths in 2006 totalled 391 and hospitalisations totalled 7,470.
The RPP focus is predominantly road safety. By addressing road safety, NZ Police also addresses the wider outcomes of these strategies. When people feel safe, they are more likely to use the land transport system (eg walking cycling and driving) thereby contributing to the access and mobility, public health and environmental objectives. Fewer deaths and injuries in the health system have a notable economic benefit for the country, thereby contributing to improving economic development. Economic development is also encouraged by RPP activities in that road trauma is reduced, and traffic flows (including after crashes) are managed. Sensible speeds contribute to energy efficiency and to minimising undesirable emissions. The policing of safety is closely linked to security in public places as well as with general crime outcomes.
On-road enforcement supported by targeted advertising campaigns has contributed to lowering the road toll. Evaluations in recent years have continued to reinforce that the combination of enforcement and advertising provides value for money. As well as addressing the more readily enforceable behaviours of speeding, drink driving, intersection driving and wearing safety belts, current advertising and education efforts also focus on fatigue, young drivers, older road users and driver distraction.
In addition, research, education and training activities, community-focused activities and the engineering of the roading system all make a significant contribution to road safety and wider land transport outcomes by working with road policing.
The National Road Safety Committee (NRSC) provides national coordination. At the local level, road safety action plans (RSAPs), (see explanation on page 158) coordinate sector-wide delivery to ensure effective, targeted and prioritised action to reduce road trauma.
The programme was prepared by Land Transport NZ in accordance with the section 12A of the LTMA and the provisions of Part 1 of Schedule 1 as is recorded in this section of the NLTP. The long-term financial forecast of anticipated expenditure on road policing activities is included with the full forecast on page 30 of this NLTP.
All consultation requirements were fulfilled in accordance with section 15 of the LTMA. The feedback from consultation was analysed and taken into consideration in the preparation of the programme.
Funding totalling $259.151 million has been approved by the Minister of Transport for the road policing programme for the 2007/08 year. Table 1 below provides a summary of the funding by activity and full time equivalent (FTE) staff. The activities are fully described in the road policing programme which can be viewed at www.police.govt.nz/resources. Each FTE is equal to 1,500 productive hours of Police time. FTEs are also presented in this NLTP by regional area allocations, where they are sub-grouped by local authority or local authority cluster.
The NZ Police hourly rate for FTEs, calculated by dividing the total funding by the total hours, is $100.40. This hourly rate includes all costs such as corporate overheads (including a share of accommodation, IT and radio networks, human resources and financial services); and the direct costs of road policing (including the Traffic Camera Office and Police Infringement Bureau, equipment eg ‘stop buses’ and breath-testing devices, vehicle-weighing devices, speed equipment and its calibration, and depreciation which funds capital items such as NZ Police vehicles).
Table 2 below contains a brief description of road policing activities funded through the RPP. Detailed descriptions, results sought, performance criteria and other information about the activities can be viewed at http://www.police.govt.nz/resources(external link).
The package of new road safety initiatives approved for the 2007/08 year targets specific driver behaviours and specific locations which are demonstrating high social cost caused by crashes in comparison with the policing resources available in those areas. The initiatives are aligned with the Road Safety to 2010 Strategy, in particular drink-driving and speed enforcement. The initiatives also provide a strong focus on trauma promoting offences and provide for an investment in technology to increase officer productivity and safety.
The new initiatives are grouped into six packages of inter-related and complementary activities as follows:
The speed package provides funding for the ongoing speed camera replacement programme and the expansion of the mobile speed camera programme in the Auckland regional area.
The drink and/or drug-driving package provides for additional Traffic Alcohol Group (TAG) staff to deliver targeted drink-driving enforcement on pan-Auckland rural and urban routes, for the delivery of targeted enforcement on rural roads with a particular focus on drink-driving in a further three Police districts (namely Northland, Eastern and Southern), for the purchase of evidential breath analysis devices for rural stations, and for the purchase of roadside drug testing devices for use in a drug-driving trial.
This package provides operational funding for the Commercial Vehicle Investigation Unit (CVIU), including for an officer to be based on the West Coast.
Funding to implement a range of new technological developments which will enable officers to carry out their duties more effectively and safely, has also been approved. Growth in the use of technology to assist road policing, and the major role that technology will play in future to enhance road safety gains, requires road policing to continue development in this area. For the 2007/08 year funding is to be provided to replace tyre deflation devices and to replace the analogue radio network with secure digital radio communications.
Funding is also provided for maintaining capability and efficiency in the light of inflationary and infrastructural cost pressures.
Additional funding for district road policing intelligence analysts has also been approved in order to contribute to more focused and effective road safety action planning and risk-targeted patrol planning, which in turn will enhance the effective deployment of Police resources and result in an increase in the detection of offenders.
The consultation processes for the preparation of the programme provided for approved organisations to comment on the level of road policing activities allocated to each activity, based on the road safety trends and outcomes for the area/s involved. Specifically they were asked, for each NZ Police activity, to indicate whether the emphasis was about right, a lesser emphasis would be acceptable, or whether more emphasis was needed; and for comment and/or justification. They were also invited to comment on road policing in general or on the RPP itself.
The following table contains the policy applied by Land Transport NZ, in consultation with NZ Police, when considering approved organisations’ road policing recommendations. Table 3: Local authority 2006/2007 road policing recommendations.
A simple road type hierarchy is used for planning the delivery of strategic road policing activities. Strategic activities are those which directly and proactively target the reduction of death and injury, and comprise the enforcement of speed limits, drink and/or druggeddriving, restraint wearing and general road safety.
Road type is linked to risk – for example, about 70 percent of the social cost[4] of crashes occurs on high speed roads. Planning and delivering road policing by road type aligns NZ Police resources with the risks presented by the different road types. In other words, since exposure to risk varies according to the type of road, the amount and type of road policing activity is allocated and managed in accordance with the risk for the area and the type of road.
The hierarchy used is defined as follows, and is consistent with the more detailed road type and crash data categories in the Crash Analysis System (CAS):
Table 4 below lists the 1,718.7 NZ Police FTEs who will deliver the 2007/08 RPP by delivery unit. Table 1 lists the same 1,718.7 NZ Police FTEs by activity. The NZ Police delivery units are fully described in the NZ Police RPP at http://www.police.govt.nz/resources(external link).
Planning road policing by road type provides for the better integration of enforcement with the planning that road controlling authorities undertake in managing their land transport networks. Likewise, interagency road safety action plans (RSAP) are for the purpose of planning and synchronising the delivery of engineering, education and enforcement activities in order to achieve value for money and joint outcomes for the land transport sector.
Road safety action plans (RSAPs) are implementation plans that record local road safety risks that are identified by the evidence base (including crash data, enforcement statistics, the results of crash reduction studies, local intelligence, network safety coordination projects[5] and, where appropriate, regional strategies and local plans). Each RSAP includes objectives, planning and review processes so that the three Es of road safety: enforcement, education and enforcement – are coordinated to ensure effective targeted and prioritised action to reduce road trauma. Each plan covers an area determined by the local partners.
The National Road Safety Committee (NRSC), comprising the chief executives of Local Government New Zealand and central government agencies with an interest in road safety, has agreed that RSAPs should be the primary mechanism for the coordination of education, engineering and enforcement approaches to road safety at the district and sub-regional levels. The Committee has tasked Land Transport NZ with ensuring uniformity in how RSAP planning is managed nationally.
RTPPs and crash books provide for road policing delivery according to risk, for example, by location, time of day and day of week and type of offence.
As explained on page 157, strategic road policing resources are allocated by road type for the delivery of speed control, drink or drugged driver control, restraint device control and visible road safety and general enforcement. Delivery of these activities can be fine-tuned at the local level in order to address risk in accordance with RSAPs, including network safety coordination projects, RTPPs and crash books.
Strategic road policing allocations are listed in the NLTP by road type only at the local authority or cluster level, but road safety outcomes are monitored in accordance with both road types and in terms of speed, drink-driving, restraint use and other factors. The tracking of the outcomes is vital in terms of the feedback loop for the planning, funding and programming of road policing resources.
Page updated: 30 June 2008
