Gisborne council to reduce use of cones for cyclone-hit road repairs

There will soon be fewer road cones on Gisborne roads thanks to a new traffic management plan.

Gisborne District Council has developed a plan to reduce costs while it repairs local roads that crumbled during Cyclone Gabrielle.

Community lifelines director Tim Barry said cones at unattended work sites, such as slips and dropouts, would be replaced with semi-permanent markers.

All roadworks would be under one traffic management plan, rather than a separate plan for each area of work, he said.

"This better meets the needs of our communities and reduces costs while continuing to prioritise staff and user safety."

The plan aligned with Minister of Transport Simeon Brown's crackdown on the use of road cones, Barry said.

The government announced in July it would require NZTA and local councils to report on how much they were spending each year on traffic management.

Barry said the council would no longer need to pay for hired cones, and labour costs would "dramatically reduce" too, because unattended sites would no longer need to be monitored every 24 hours.

Procedures for attended sites, such as footpath repairs, night repair work and working on a shoulder were still a work in progress.