They divide some of our busiest roads — but some say there aren’t enough median barriers across New Zealand.
“The other thing is when we do put in median barriers, it becomes crucial that we’re keeping them well maintained,” AA road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen told 1News.
1News asked NZTA Waka Kotahi how much of the State Highway network is covered by median barriers.
A spokesperson confirmed the total length of the state highway network in NZ is approximately 11,000km, while the total length of median barriers in New Zealand is 682.4km.
This means about 6.2% of the total state highway network is covered by median barriers.
“Some sections of highway have ‘double’ median barriers – i.e. separate barriers on opposite sides of a divided median, meaning 1km of road can have 2km of median barrier installed”, the spokesperson said.
They noted these figures include the “double” median barriers, meaning the level of coverage is even lower.
The figures also don’t include any barriers installed on the local road network, which is around 94,000km in length.
“In Sweden, they have more than 5000 kilometres of divided highway and we actually have a similar sized roading network.,” said Thomsen. “So if we saw a lot more divided highways in NZ we would have a lot less fatal head on severe crashes.”
It comes days after a triple fatality south of Auckland, where a truck veered through a wire rope median barrier, onto the wrong side of the road.
An investigation’s underway but NZTA Waka Kotahi has said the barrier was an older type.
“A big bugbear of mine constantly these days is the incredible amount of money that is invested into putting barriers in place, and how long it takes for repairs to be done to these barriers”, said road safety advocate Greg Murphy.
Transport Minister Simeon Brown said “maintenance and resilience, and safety, are two of our four key priorities”.
He said the maintenance of individual barriers was “an operational consideration.”
“NZTA aims to invest our limited funding in a way which will achieve the greatest overall safety benefits across the entire state highway network”, a spokesperson told 1News.
“We seek to balance the upgrade or replacement of existing barriers with the need to install barriers at sites which currently have no median or side barriers at all, many of which have high crash rates.”
