SAFE PASSAGE FOR VISITORS Neil Bennett Road Asset Manager, Fulton Hogan Christchurch, New Zealand Abstract Tourism is vitally important to New Zealand’s economy and in the year ended March 2014 over 2.7M visitors arrived in our country. Increasing numbers of tourists are electing to have “self-drive” holidays. In Southland there is a popular tourist route known as the Southern Scenic route, that has an unsealed loop off the sealed road that accesses the popular tourist attractions of Curio Bay and Slope Point (the southernmost point in New Zealand). This paper explains the novel use of a cell phone application, originally developed in Sweden to survey roughness, to accurately monitor driver performance, identify out of context curves particularly from the perspective of a driver who has never seen the road before and often never driven on unsealed roads. The tourists are followed by a survey vehicle through the unsealed road section, photographed every second while driving and the phone data is analysed to enable monitoring of road condition trends at different times of the year. A seal extension would reduce the problem but as a standalone project this has been unable to gain NZ Transport Agency subsidy and so was unaffordable for Council at this time. Unsealed road maintenance strategies are therefore necessary to ensure the safety of our visitors. Key Words Unsealed, Tourist, Gravel, Accident, Crash, Overseas, Self-drive Introduction centres on seeing as much of that landscape as possible in the time available. In most cases In mid-2013 Southland District Council came tourists pre-plan a geographical outline of their under significant pressure from locals about trip, including if they want to see both islands, the condition of the unsealed roads in a what the ‘North Island – South Island’ split will popular diversion off the Southern Scenic be, and some specific tourist destinations, Route through the Catlins. The maintenance before leaving their home countries. Most contractor delivering via the Foveaux Alliance tourists had planned some of their route in contract managed to make improvements to advance and have rough itineraries. the road to improve the condition of the worst sections of the road prior to the peak tourist After the major destinations are ‘locked in’ season in 2013-14. there is then flexibility to include local attractions and points of interest identified by Accidents continued to occur on the road and tourist brochures and word of mouth. Flexibility an increasing public focus on overseas drivers is often built in depending on factors such as came to a head in the summer of 2014-2015. time and the weather. As the maintenance contractor in the alliance, Fulton Hogan investigated if any tool could be Tourism is promoted nationally – promoting used to assist Council make a business case New Zealand as the destination and regionally to have this road sealed. There would be very – promoting the attractions within a region. In few unsealed roads with such a high accident Southland, Venture Southland is the agency reporting rate as Southland District had been responsible and the website proactive in issuing “crash cards” to local www.southlandnz.com is one marketing tool. farmers and tow companies to ensure that as The Southern Scenic route features on the many accidents as possible were recorded in front page and it provides a link to the New Zealand Transport Agency Crash www.southernscenicroute.co.nz which is a Analysis System (CAS) database. The standalone website promoting the attractions database can separately report accidents through three separate regions and tourist reported to the Police and the ‘non-reported’ agencies. This quote is from the webpage. accidents. “This journey between Queenstown and Nationally, a focus was placed on overseas Dunedin is approximately 610 kilometres (km) drivers following a spate of high profile of natural and cultural attractions laid out one accidents. The statistics show the problem is after the other – wildlife viewing, short walks, over represented in the south. Many public mountain-biking, fishing, hunting, boating, commentators are calling for more strenuous camping, tramping and caving – making it an checks on overseas drivers before being ideal drive for those with time to explore”. allowed to rent vehicles. This is particularly relevant as self-drive touring is becoming increasingly popular. Fulton Hogan has been at the leading edge of the use of the Swedish phone application Roadroid to monitor pavement roughness and the information available also includes speed and position. It therefore may be able to be used in order to try and identify “out of context” curves and conditions that tourists found particularly challenging. This paper explains that process and the findings. Tourism Important to New Zealand The key tourist attraction in New Zealand is the Figure 1: Extract from Tourism Brochure landscape, and tourists’ planning of holidays In addition to the 62 reported accidents there It is with this marketing that the Catlins were a further 51 accidents stored in the CAS becomes a ‘must see’ destination for visitors database with the information being collected to New Zealand. on the Council crash cards (shown as unreported in Fig. 2). 21 of the 62 accidents High Accident Rate were identified as being foreign drivers and recent media publicity indicates that Southland Under-reporting of rural road accidents is the has a high percentage of foreign driver norm in New Zealand with local farmers often accidents. towing crash victims out of the fences and the Police and Local Authorities never hearing The most revealing information comes from about the accident. Southland District issued the verbatim comments in the CAS crash crash reporting cards to residents in 2009 and reports. These include: this caused a sudden spike in ‘un-reported’ accidents which were stored in the CAS “has remained on right-hand side as he is used database. The high reporting rates have tailed to driving in Belgium” off but the Council has been very proactive with other safety measures discussed later in “lost control in gravel and ended up off road on the paper. opposite side” Analysis of the Southern Scenic Road “rear slipped out on loose gravel – driver tried unsealed section from Fortrose to Curio Bay to correct with accelerator – after 3rd fish tail (Figure 2) identified 62 reported accidents slid off road into ditch” over 14 years with 75% of those crashes recorded as “Bend – Lost Control/Head On”. “X travelling towards Curio Bay cut corner and ran into Y who was travelling towards Tokanui” Southern Scenic “Van came through cutting on top of hill. Hit by wind as exited and pushed left into deep Unsealed Accidents gravel, overcorrected and rolled over” 2014 2 5 Southland District Council Actions 2013 5 10 5 No local authority wants the adverse publicity 2012 3 5 2011 2 4 that arises from a road with a high accident 4 rate which potentially puts off tourists from 2010 4 0 visiting the region with the potential loss to 19 2009 3 6 tourism based businesses. 3 2008 2 5 2007 1 Council is under considerable pressure and 3 2006 7 this quote from the Council website explains 2 the situation. 2005 8 7 2004 3 “Southland District is facing some hard 2003 21 decisions about the future of parts of its 2002 roading network because of funding 21 2001 2 constraints. Government funding is being 5 tightened and Council is only too aware of the 2000 3 financial burden some of the district's 0 5 10 15 20 ratepayers are under. Council has worked hard in the past few years to come up with Unreported Foreign Driver Accidents innovative ways of saving money and is continually trying to do more with less, a Figure 2 – Accidents on Southern Scenic network plan looking at the economics, social benefits and safety of our roads has been ruts and corrugations which people had to created.” navigate to reach popular tourist spots such as Slope Point. Accident Reporting Cards Vehicles frequently drove on the wrong side of Council established the crash reporting card the road to avoid the worst areas Mr Stronach system to increase the accident reporting to said. assist with the economic justification for future improvements. "A lot times there's been vehicles come off the road and farmers have to pull them back on . Advisory Signs . trucks and campervans get stuck going up Council has installed signage warning drivers hills." of the high crash rate and reminders to stay left on the roads. Most of these accidents were small and went unreported therefore the council was unaware of the scale of the issue, he said. But it shouldn't take a fatal accident to get noticed. Foveaux Alliance Response An alliance maintenance contract is managed by a team representing both Council and the contractor where decisions are made by an Alliance Management Team (AMT). To find funds to do improvements on the Southern Scenic road, cuts had to be made elsewhere and there was pressure on the overall budget. Prior to the end of December 2013 the AMT identified five sites to trial Figure 3 – Large warning sign various maintenance metalling strategies to see if they could be strategies to be applied to Temporary Speed Restrictions other road sections. Over the peak tourist season Council imposes a 50km/h speed limit on the unsealed section. The construction work completed on parts of the Coastal route lasted through the Christmas Targeted Maintenance break (4 weeks) before any intervention was Enhanced maintenance metalling strategies at required. The grader, a construction roller and known trouble spots. water-cart were used in an attempt to prolong the surface life of areas which corrugated soon Public Pressure after grading.