Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that the land transport system faces right now. It creates significant challenges for our road, rail, and public transport networks and weather-related hazards like landslips and flooding cause damage and disruption to our communities. There are also new risks like sea-level rise. 

Tiro Rangi is our Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency long-term plan for adapting the land transport system to our changing climate. 

Named, Tiro from Titiro – to observe, to see, we need to look both with our physical eyes and spiritually; and Rangi from Ranginui – Sky Father.   

Tiro Rangi – our climate adaptation plan 2022–2024

Why an adaptation plan? 

Climate change is already affecting how we live. We must plan and adapt to its effects to avoid ongoing disruptions and costly emergency responses. 

Tiro Rangi is also a critical action in the government’s national adaptation plan. It brings together the resilience work already underway on the transport network and includes new adaptation actions. It will support us to take a more proactive and coordinated approach to resilience using what we know about climate change.  

Tiro Rangi is starting us on a path towards a climate resilient land transport system.   

What’s inside this plan?   

Tiro Rangi looks at the long-term impacts of climate change. It lays a strong foundation for adaptation over two years to 2024 with 21 high-level actions in six themes, and a long-term goal: 

  • By 2050 our land transport system to be resilient in a changing climate to enable a system that improves wellbeing and liveability. 

The actions build on existing initiatives and prioritise those that will unlock future action: 

  • Better understand and manage climate risks to Waka Kotahi.
  • Ensure that our strategic system planning and investment direction is enabling climate adaptation.
  • Embed climate adaptation in our investment decision-making processes and delivery.
  • Ensure that robust evidence underpins our work on climate adaptation.
  • Embed te ao Māori worldview and build a partnership approach to climate adaptation for transport.
  • Get ready to work together on climate adaptation.

By 2035 we expect to have completed a step change. This will be to the way we invest in, plan, design, deliver, operate, and use the land transport system so it’s resilient in a changing climate. 

Our implementation plan 

We are developing an implementation plan. This will provide the detail needed to achieve the actions, to give us a view of the work ahead, the resources we need, and to have more informative conversations with partners. 

We’ll share more details about the work in the implementation plan here, as it develops. 

Our changed climate represents the biggest challenge to the future of all people in Aotearoa and the life-support systems that make our world fit to live in.  

Tau ana te ahuru o pakarau 

A flourishing Aotearoa, a tranquil place full of promise and hope. 

To find out more about our work, email us at: resilience@nzta.govt.nz

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