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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS BOARD OF INQUIRY MacKays to Peka Peka Expressway Proposal HEARING at KAPITI COAST on 10 JANUARY 2013 BOARD OF INQUIRY: Sir John Hansen (Chairperson) Environment Commissioner David Bunting (Board Member) Ms Glenice Paine (Board Member) Mr Mark Apeldoorn (Board Member) Page 1897 [9.31 am] CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Just before we call Mr Gross and Mr Gray, 5 Commissioner Bunting has indicated that he worked in the same organisation as Mr Gray many years ago. He identified that to the Board beforehand and, just for the record, we are satisfied there is no conflict of interest involved. So Mr Gross and Mr Gray if you would come forward please. 10 MR GROSS: Sir John, commissioners, my name is Michael Gross, I am currently chairperson of the Wellington District of the New Zealand Automobile Association. I have a background in local government, I chaired various local, regional and national bodies of local government 15 during the 1980s and 1990s and was spokesman for the New Zealand Local Government Association on transport issues at that time. After I exited local government in 1995 I was the establishment chair of the Transfund board and chaired that organisation for seven of its 20 nine years until policy changes saw it re-amalgamated with the Safety Authority and later, of course, morphed into the New Zealand Transport Agency as we have today. I have with me Mr Alex Gray who is an engineer who has spent a 25 career in major infrastructure projects around the Wellington region and he will largely present our submission. In essence we are in favour and support the development of the road of national significance from the Wellington Airport and Port north through MacKays Crossing. 30 We support the construction to motorway standard and we believe that the road should be designated as a motorway throughout its full length. In essence we believe the road should be self explaining and that in fact there will be no reason, with the same standard, for motorists to believe that they would other than see motorists travelling in the same direction 35 on that road. I will now introduce Mr Gray who will present our submission. CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. 40 MR GRAY: Thanks, Michael. Sir John and commissioners, my full name is Alexander David Gray. I have a bachelor of civil engineering from the University of Canterbury and I have worked in a senior role on multiple state highway projects in the Wellington area over the past 40 years 45 including construction of the Terrace Tunnel, Ngauranga Interchange, Grenada Interchange and Newlands Interchange. I also managed the Kapiti Coast 10.01.13 Page 1898 Ministry of Works office in Porirua until 1987 and when it was closed I was actually responsible to Mr Bunting and that‟s the conflict of interest which he raised which, as you pointed out, was many years ago. And was responsible for maintenance and construction activities 5 on the state highway from Wellington right through to Foxton. [9.34 am] Since that time I have then worked for both contracting and consulting 10 companies and currently as senior project manager for Impact Group in Wellington. In 1999, while working for Transfund, I helped write and present the first risk guidelines for roading projects. I then worked for Beca 15 Consultants for three years and focused on risk assessments for major roading projects and I facilitated risk workshops for several major projects including State Highway 18, Upper Harbour Bridge and State Highway 25 Kopu Bridge replacement, which I am pleased to note has now been built. I am very familiar with the principles of risk 20 assessment and regularly use NZS/AS 4360 on projects I am involved in. From a risk management perspective we cannot accept that allowing cyclists to use the shoulder of this expressway is a safe practice. The 25 design philosophy statement, DPS, page 5, section 9, “Safety” states, “The design of the proposed expressway is to meet KiwiRAP four star standards”. We have no doubt that it meets this standard for motor vehicles as a median barrier is provided and nine metre clear zone from the edge of the traffic lane. However, if a vehicle loses control to the 30 left it crosses the shoulder which NZTA currently propose to allow cyclists to travel on. This is contrary to the KiwiRAP safe road system, appendix 1, which lists four key principles. Human beings make mistakes and crashes are 35 inevitable. The human body has a limited ability to withstand crash forces. A safe system aims to manage the magnitudes of crash forces on a human body to remove the potential for death and serious injury. System designers and road users must all share responsibility for managing crash forces to levels that don‟t result in death or serious 40 injury, and I think this is a very important point. It will take a whole of system approach to implement the safe system in New Zealand. All parts of the system need to be strengthened, safe roads and road sides, safe speeds, safe vehicles and safe road use. 45 Reading through some of the NZTA evidence we note that the evidence of Noel Nancekivell of NZTA, paragraph 51.3, the third sentence reads, Kapiti Coast 10.01.13 Page 1899 “For similar reasons edge shoulders are provided as they allow vehicles to leave the expressway safely, for instance in the event of a vehicle incident”. Regretfully Mr Nancekivell does not appear to have considered the consequences of an out of control vehicle colliding with 5 a cyclist on the shoulder. Only two days ago, as I was driving on State Highway 2 near Maungaraki, the vehicle in front of me, over a period of 4 or 5 hundred metres, actually went onto the sealed shoulder two or three times by about over a metre. And, of course, that road only has room, there isn‟t a separate cycleway, but had there been a cyclist on 10 that sealed shoulder at the time this vehicle was weaving in broad daylight, you know, there might have been an incident. There was a recent example of the consequence of an open road collision between a car and cyclist. We mention the tragic fatal death 15 of cyclist Mrs Patricia Fraser who died near Sanson in broad daylight on November 13, 2011 while training for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge. This 35 year old mother of four young children was hit from behind by a motorist who admitted he had seen her 300 metres away but failed to avoid her. And Mrs Fraser‟s cycling companion, 20 Tania Malaquin, who witnessed the fatality, commented that she had sold her bike gear since the crash as, “You can‟t see what I saw and do it again, I just want to stop when I pass cyclists and say „Don‟t do it, it‟s not worth the risk”. And the article in detail is in appendix 2. 25 So, in our opinion, the MacKays to Peka Peka expressway does not meet the KiwiRAP four start standard for cyclists if they choose to ride on the shoulder or carriageway rather than the shared cycleway. We accept that the likelihood of a cyclist versus out of control car accident is low but the consequences for the cyclist, if hit by a vehicle travelling 30 at 100 kilometres an hour, would almost certainly be fatal. Because of this likely fatal consequence we therefore have concluded that the MacKays to Peka Peka route should be designated as a motorway as was originally intended. 35 And I look back on my time when I worked on projects like the Terrace Tunnel and Ngauranga flyovers and the title block on those old Ministry of Works drawings, which Mr Bunting might remember, was actually labelled “Wellington to Foxton motorway”. And when I worked for the Ministry of Works in the mid 80s we talked then about 40 building the Sandhills motorway. One of the key principles of risk management is, where possible, to eliminate risk especially potentially fatal risks. By making this route a motorway the risk of a fatal cyclist versus vehicle accident is almost 45 completely eliminated excepting the principle that a cyclist might still ride illegally on a motorway. Kapiti Coast 10.01.13 Page 1900 [9.39 am] We have previously commented that there are plenty of alternative 5 routes for cyclists if the carriageway on the MacKays to Peka Peka route was designated a motorway. Firstly, the existing state highway will become a local road, probably with a lower speed limit and will be ideally suited for cyclists with lower speed limits, much less traffic and far fewer heavy commercial vehicles. 10 The proposed three metre wide shared cycleway and pedestrian walkway may not be suitable if this route becomes a motorway as there is likely to be conflict in high use areas between pedestrians and cyclists, particularly around the Kapiti Road area where the College is 15 based. We suggest that either the shared route be widened to four metres or separate facilities be provided for each user. Also a significant length of the shared walkway is currently shown as a gravel surface and, if the motorway designation was approved, we 20 consider the whole length of the cycleway should be paved. I now respond to some of the rebuttal evidence of NZTA, Andrew Quinn, paragraphs 71 to 74. We are grateful that NZTA takes the issue of road safety very seriously and have subsequently 25 commissioned road safety audits for the project but are surprised and concerned that these have been left to such a late stage in the project.