How effective has the road cone hotline been?

More than 650 reports have been made to the road cone hotline within its first month, but how effective has it been on the streets of Auckland?

It is lunchtime in central Auckland, and the Wellesley Street Upgrade project is well underway.

One day it will be a connection to the City Rail Link - but right now there is construction noise and a bright orange line of road cones.

"We work around here, so it's been like this forever. Just used to it now, but looking forward for them to go away," a woman who was heading out for lunch told First Up.

Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety Brooke Van Velden announced significant shifts to rebalance WorkSafe's focus last month, kicking off with a road cone hotline.

On the streets of Auckland, attitudes towards the hotline - which is actually an online form - were mixed.

Some welcomed it.

"I've been tempted (to report)," said one person. "I think there are way too many of them (road cones), I think they are overused."

Some opposed it.

"There's an excessive focus on road cones. They are a sign of progress, I love progress so I have no problem with excessive road cones."

Some were not sure whether that was the solution to their problems.

"Auckland has a lot of road works, but I don't know if I would call a hotline."

Since launching in June, the hotline received nearly 400 valid reports in week one, 126 in week two, 71 in week three and 70 in week four.

Road controlling authorities say

The digital hotline collects complaints and sends reports to road controlling authorities.

Among all road controlling authorities, Auckland Transport received the most complaints, with nearly 200 reported.

Auckland Transport group manager for road corridor access Tracey Berkahn said she was not surprised.

"I think that's fairly expected because we're the largest city, we've got the most people and we've also got quite a lot of development going on. So there are a lot of work sites."

Berkahn said investigating all of the complaints had created quite a bit of extra work for her team of six, but it had led to improvements.

"We had one particular case in Albany where it was in a business area where there was a piece of electrical maintenance work being done. We had diggers and generators and tools on site. But when we went out, we realised that the site probably had about 30 too many cones. The work site was larger than the plan what's submitted to us for approval, and we talked to the site supervisor and they removed about 30 cones to make that site smaller, to be less disruptive on the businesses and the motorists in the area."

Berkahn said on an average day, there were 2000 active sites in Auckland.

Among the 200 sites investigated from the hotline reports, 30-40 percent of them had either too many or too few cones.

"Quite often when we go out (to investigate), we find where the customer thinks there are too many cones, it might be that there's been a lane created for pedestrians. And if you're driving past in a car, all you can see are orange cones. But if you're walking down that lane as a pedestrian, you're much safer because you're kept away from the machinery on the work site and the cars on the road are kept away from you."

Berkahn said Auckland Transport had an existing cone reporting system, but the hotline generated greater public awareness.

"The one thing that I would like listeners to understand is that it's been really positive having this relationship with WorkSafe and being able to contact customers about their queries and explain sometimes why those sites are necessary and how they're providing safety."

Wellington City Council received 57 complaints in the first week but after a month that had dropped to just 8. The council declined to be interviewed but in a statement said they believed complaints had fallen because the novelty of the hotline is wearing off, and that no cones has been removed due to a hotline report.

Meanwhile, Christchurch City Council has received 40 complaints.

In a statement, transport operations manager Stephen Wright sid while they found most of the sites were compliant, any issue that needed to be addressed by the contractor were discussed from an education approach in the first instance, but it was up to the contractor to decide whether the cones were needed or not.

NZTA, who received the 140 complaints, did not respond to First Up's request for comment.

Word on the streets

Back on the streets, Temporary Traffic Management workers were split on whether the road cones themselves - and the hotline - worked.

"I think there's too many of them and it's a great idea there is an 0800 number," a worker with four years' experience in site management told First Up.

"I think that (the hotline) is an overkill. There isn't a problem unless it's blocking a car park or it's limiting businesses to customers. Now I think the problem is people like myself are kind of bending those rules - more cones have been putting out than what's needed and some don't pick up their gear after they've finished their site. But then the other flip side to that coin is gear getting stolen, so therefore what was safe before was not safe anymore because there weren't enough cones.

"If it weren't for people like me, people would be driving into trenches and driving into holes," a TTM manager with more than 10 years of experience told First Up.

RNZ asked another worker how he would feel if I took half of the cones away from his site.

It was a definite "no" from him. He said sometimes when pedestrians saw a gap between the cones they would try to cross the road, and the closely lined up cones kept pedestrians safe and made sure they followed the rules.

WorkSafe said the road cone hotline will be reviewed at the end of the year.

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