There’s no better example of an overstaffed government Department with time on its hands and thus becoming “creative”, than the Health and Safety mob and their ludicrous road cones excesses. Nowhere else in the world does this occur, nor was it ever deemed necessary in New Zealand hitherto.
Minor works on the side of a road which once would have been enclosed by fencing tightly around them, now feature hundreds of metres of cones, before and after the works, often narrowing traffic into a single lane causing totally unnecessary traffic jams.
At each end an understandably bored red jacketed employee holds a stop-go sign and a radio to communicate with his or her opposite number, two or three hundred metres down the other end of this farce. Parked off the road are several trucks, their drivers sitting all day inside gazing at their cell-phones. Their function is to deliver the bloody cones in the morning and pick them up at day’s end.
This ludicrous nonsense is causing unnecessary chaos and hold-ups right across the country, and not just in our cities. Furthermore, it involves thousands of workers who could be gainfully employed in something sensible.
A recent survey of tourists’ impressions of New Zealand revealed their shock on encountering this cone farce, as their only negative impression.
Knocking it on the head is one measure the government can safely take as the whole country is furious about it. Do it and I’ll wager they’ll immediately soar in the polls with huge public gratitude.
As an amusing aside, the only cone one encounters in Glasgow, typical of that city’s zany spirit, is on the head of a very large 1844 statue of the Duke of Wellington sitting astride his horse. That cone has been there for three decades and recently gained listing status. It’s fittingly located outside the city’s Modern Art Gallery, filled as it is with bogus alleged art. Google it and see for yourselves.
The day will inevitably come when our museums feature a cone room containing photos of the current madness and explanatory material, as a record of a crazy period in our history. Visitors will gaze in disbelief, much like they do now at displays of past eras lunacy.
24 Comments
What is needed is a new tax.
Ten quid a week per cone to go to the government coffers rising another ten quid per cone every six months. A plane with a camera flying backwards and forwards over the country, a little software and a nice monthly bill going to the local council.
I guess that machines that grind cones to bits would become very popular.
The people who rent out the cones aren’t complaining.
The extent of the absurdity on top of the mindless cone shuffling is now we have an orange jerkin wearer sitting in a deck chair beside each of the automatic road works traffic lights, which I presume were invented to do away with the stop go people. In your face brainless waste.
Don’t forget the people who nick the cones.
absolutely agree with this having just driven through the central north island facing lots of stop/go delay and kilometers of cones and having the time to observe and ponder what did the workers do before cell phones relieved the bordom ?
The draconian H&S in NZ is used as a fall back position (much like indigenous esoteric things) for many people to justify hold ups, costs and general hopelessness.
If there was some actual research undertaken , most of NZ would be appalled at the real costs this is adding to infrastructure costs (as most private building construction is at least semi-efficient). I wouldn’t be surprised if its close to 20 to 25% in extra costs for projects below $10m and up to 40% on projects under $500k .
It is totally out of hand with current work on my suburban street has far more people on traffic control then actually doing work most days . What I find even more astonishing is the guy in the Downers Ute who seemingly just seems to drive around in loops for about 3 hours a day . I haven’t actually ever seen him stop , get out and do anything .
Yesterday I walked through it and as you say ,both ends traffic control on phones, digger guy stopped on phone, worker with shovel sitting next to digger on phone and odd other person milling around. 30 minutes later a truck turned up and digger and worker back on job. One truck to one digger and being central Auckland trucks on probably 1.5 hr roundtrip to dump . The best bit I find even more astonishing , is them ripping up all the bluestone kerbs and moving them 300mm into the road so tree roots have extra room ( hmmm… these are 4m high trees) , then saying all new catchpits Watercare put in a year earlier, are all in wrong place . That on top off the previous 18 months (!) to put a new stormwater line in where the traffic control circus came back three or four times (yes including the two trucks 500m apart) . This is all excluding the time they came back as someone filled part of the new line with concrete at end . Just hopeless stuff you cant make up. Little wonder they cant keep up with infrastructure cost increases.
Update as I walked past today at 11 am. I may have been too harsh as the the white van (not ute- ute was parked other end) pulled up and the guy got out and opened the side door and then stood there Further up the road (its only 500m of work) 3 people were working and only 5 people were sitting under trees on phones or talking .
On my way back, as by now the 3 would have been tired out, there were 7 not working /sitting around/on phones and 2 actually working. Luckily by now it was 11.50am and all will be able to have stopped for lunch and a well earned rest. I now know why the site boss said works programmed for 3 weeks but you’ll be lucky and probably take 3 months. They decided move kerbs, redo foot paths and at same time ripped out everyone’s street crossings . Be nice when finished however….. at considerable cost to the ratepayers
Dave, if you are wondering how they get the cones in straight, come out to rural east Auckland where my wife or I have been stopped at least 5 times recently as teams practice laying cones in straight lines. And they do it very slowly!
@Dave
Your figures sound right. I was talking with an old varsity mate a month or so ago, a civil engineer whose job is to maintain road bridges in the Waikato, and he told me that 1/3 of the cost of every roading project is in “traffic management”.
Totally agree with you @ Dave, in the percentage of h&s costs incurred both in the private and public sector. Another example Is when a local contractor is employed to pick up rubbish/litter on our highways usually involves a vehicle being driven with flashing orange lights highlighting that there are workers ahead, next a Ute with someone driving behind a side by side type atv with 2 x people one person driving and the other person leaning out the side with a grabber of some description to pick the bloody rubbish up. All of them suited up in high vis and helmets. And to think this work was undertaken by people doing community service by the courts !
Here in Wanganui without an “h”, the dominant contractor has fine tuned these cleanup exercises to the nth degree on State Highway 3. The “picker upper” is on foot walking on the verge and the entire length of the highway where he is to gather his goodies is one way traffic to the side of the highway away from him., Of course, it’s cones for Africa with bored Lolli Pop men at both ends and a 30 km speed limit for the sections involved.
These ridiculous Coning Gangs are having an absolute royaller charging upwards of $6 per cone/day. In Opiki (a settlement between PN and Shannon, a gang had coned off 1.2 kilometres of road into one way, had a lollipop man either end with delays of 10 mins plus for JUST two women with large plastic bags picking up rubbish. I swear we were getting laughed at when we finally went through
Just as an aside, calling them a ‘gang’ is probably closer to the mark then we realise in a lot of cases.
This has all flowed from the schooling system, which has scared off male teach has vanished, which was the highlight of my day…the now no risk culture, which is a tragedy… These ideological theorists could not possibly understand the value of risk…
While I don’t agree with everyone ACT represents, charter schools is a no brainer; providing some hope this will readdress the imbalance. Its about time teachers were paid for performance, like most other professions…and that one size doesnt fit all…
While there are exemptions, the lack of performance of public servants is our main problem to this country/western world. A reflection of the very low quality of elected members that (are suppose to) represent us. Ask yourself, who would want to work for most of them?!!
While I agree with all that and the comments, there is an even bigger incompetence costing us millions. Suspend your disbelief, its true.
The ability of the many engineers, business plan writers and consultants to offer public sector decision makers real costs before they approve projects is a sorry piss take.
In Wellington the local council approved a Water Reservoir (tank) in Mt Cook at a cost of 8m.
I dont know what the final cost was but it was north of EIGHT times the 8m at 64m the last I heard.
A small mercy is that the project was finished, but that lack of completion is another whole sad story!
The Wellington City Council commissioned a Christmas Tree to be constructed out of cones last year and ‘planted’ it at the end of Courtenay Place. I noted a huge bloody fence was put up around it, no doubt for fear of it being destroyed by the ‘angry mob’. I am still trying to decide whether this was a sick joke played on us by Mayor Whanau and her cabal of Marxist
Councillors or a genuine homage to all things health and safety….’blessed are the cones’
I am surprised Act and NZ First haven’t picked up on this extortionate road cone nonsense. I would think the accidents prevented from virtually no road cones that we used to have would be countered by new accidents created by this ridiculous plethora of cones everywhere. Apparently, (as Dave suggested) this traffic management overkill adds about 25% to the cost of our roading construction.
There are thousands of examples. A recent one. Widening an entrance way onto a two lane quiet country highway. Cost of the work $13,000, cost of the traffic management $14,000. A couple of signs and two or three cones from the actual contractor would have been more than sufficient.
If employers insisted on cell phones staying with an employees lunch box and smoko provisions, the absolutely hopeless would leave the job and rest might actually get something done.
Our Road Cone usage has come to typify the incredible inefficiency of the present generation of public service employees in this country.
Bob, you 100% correct. I am holidaying in Vietnam, the traffic is horrific, but no sign of traffic control, or cones!!!! I have yet to see an accident after 11 days.
Im afraid the infection has spread to Victoria. An equally ott OH&S “industry” that does little but slow down industrious people.
That said-I don’t envy people working on the roads (the handful that actually work). Think of all the dreadful drivers you encounter daily and then imagine having to stand out in the road amid them.
There is even a “Cone Laying Training School” in Auckland; I kid you not, I have seen a truck with something like Traffic Management Academy sign written on it with two in the cab and another two on the back practicing laying out cones (at 5.00pm I might add) they then loop around the block and pick them all up again; all at the same time blocking the traffic flow and creating the usual snarl up these cone offs creat. Maybe we should have a Top Town competition to see who can lay the most cones over a month and pick a winning town that then can have a whole month of zero cones as a prize !!
Want another total excess check out the over width rules, so many extra people for a load that doesnt even extend over the centre line.
There’s a course you need to do before becoming a road cone s
Technician. It’s a science you know. Most likely a university credit .
Just as bad here in OZ .. and seems recently the Union that caters to these folks have
managed to get a pay deal of $10,000 per month.! for watching cars go by , slowly.!
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[…] The day will inevitably come when our museums feature a cone room containing photos of the current madness and explanatory material, as a record of a crazy period in our history. Visitors will gaze in disbelief, much like they do now at displays of past eras lunacy. – Bob Jones […]