NZTA almost spending more on consultants than roads

Newshub reports:

Since 2019, the transport agency’s spent $145 million on consultants, covering things like the environment and planning, versus just $200 million on actual construction.

Isn’t that amazing? Almost as much on consultants than on actually building roads.

But the Waka Kotahi spend up doesn’t end there. Since 2017, it’s more than doubled its PR team from 32 staff to 88 – 65 of whom are earning $100,000 or more.

NZTA used to build and improve roads so that non urban roads could be safely travelled on at the open road speed limit. Now they think their job is to not improve roads, so that they can lower speed limits on them, and hence they need more comms staff to explain why they are not building roads.