Ag 10 may, 2018

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Thursday, May 10, 2018

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Dusty dishes out the therapy

Balling begins in earnest

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Roading projects axed BY SUE NEWMAN

SUE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ

Ashburton residents will be in for a long wait to have traffic lights installed in either Tinwald or Walnut Avenue as both projects have been axed from a 10-year roading investment plan. As Labour, the Greens and NZ First swing the focus of their roading policy from traffic movement to road safety and resilience, a raft of state highway

projects have slipped off the NZ Tranport Agency’s radar in its draft investment proposal for the next 10 years. And among those canned are the two critical road improvements on State Highway One through Ashburton. Both projects have been on the agency’s to-do list for several years, with the Ashburton District Council constantly applying pressure for committed funding.

Neither project is on the draft list for the next 10 years, and mayor Donna Favel is furious. She received a phone call late last week from NZTA director of regional relationships, South Island, Jim Harland, telling her what was not in the plan. “I said to him, I hope you’re calling me to tell me about the second bridge. He said, I’m not, I’m calling with bad news.” A changed Government Policy

Statement (GPS) meant the projects had been removed because they no longer met the new framework, Favel said. Ashburton, however would not let this go unchallenged, she said. “I’ll be making a case to the Land Transport Committee. These projects have been around for a long time. “With Tinwald, there were meetings in 2004 and people were told it would be a couple of

years. Now it’s 14 years and it’s still not happening.” If there were any bright spots on the changed roading focus it was that the emphasis was now on local roads and optimistically, that could see more money for Ashburton, Favel said.

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