In Transit - May 1996 No. 73 - Environmental benefits from sealing SH12 through Waipoua Forest

 The May 1996 edition of In Transit primarily focused on the following:

• Benefits of completion of the sealing of SH12 in Northland through the Waipoua Kauri Forest.  The benefits including less dust, fewer weeds and less runoff.  Sealing the final 10km of SH12 cost $5.5m and was the final section of state highway in Northland that was unsealed.  The project included "footbridges" to protect Kauri trees adjacent to the road. 
• A  discussion paper on funding Alternatives to Roading was released. This funding output class would be available from July when Transfund took over land transport funding functions from Transit.  It was explicitly created because the lack of road pricing meant that relative prices between modes did not reflect the benefits of funding activities for non-road modes. Types of projects expected to be funded include those that remove trucks from roads with high-maintenance costs and passenger transport activities that could reduce congestion.
• Development of the national traffic database. This includes data that estimates the revenue generated from different parts of the network relative to expenditure. Some data points included:
• State highways are 11% of the network but carry 44% of VKT
• Unsealed roads are 40% of the network but carry 3% of VKT

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