Amy Brooke
No wonder the bee population is in decline – and we can at least partly blame the NZTA. In disbelief, given that bees are needed everywhere, with flowering spring blossom on fruit trees, I passed today an NZTA truck drenching with spray the wildflowers and grasses on the side of State Highway 6 going into Nelson.
This is eco-vandalism. There is no excuse for it at all – these wildflowers and grasses are no threat to anybody, just roadside strips presenting no fire hazard.
Moreover, given that we are in a cash-strapped economy, it is high time that the budget for the NZTA is scaled right back. On the 16-kilometre road from here to Nelson, the ever-increasing number of signs by the side of the road, that almost seemingly day-by-day get erected by the NZTA, shows that it is too lavishly funded.
It is well known that the more signs put up by the side of the road, the less notice the public takes of them. If the NZTA was doing something useful like putting up median barriers to help save lives, nobody would object. But, on the contrary, more and more completely unnecessary signs are being erected as if this government organisation is determined to be as profligate with taxpayers’ money as possible – or as much as it can get away with.
For example, among the new signs springing up by a local school is one that says School Bus Turning. A few metres past this is a sign that says “School”…pointing in the same direction. A few metres past this is an additional arrow, pointing right to the school. Then, in case this isn’t enough, just past this is another sign that says “Kura” – apparently te reo for school.
In fact, this woke organisation is now replacing the former school signs all around this area with the word Kura. Little wonder an American acquaintance recently asked what kind of school was a Kura school.
More and more totally unnecessary signs are going up – for example indicating that a road is slippery when wet – (all roads are slippery when wet and these signs are placed where I have never seen anything in the road conditions to warn that special care is needed). Then there is the ubiquitous “Share the Road” and even illustrations of bikes on their own when this organisation is unable to find anything else to inflict on us. Another on a side road says, “Glenduan welcomes safe drivers” – utterly superfluous. We all welcome safe drivers. We also have “Trucks Turning” notices in areas that I have probably seen only a couple of trucks turning– well visible beforehand – in two or three decades.
More and more school-zoning signs are being erected – even on side roads away from a school. There are even now warnings of roads ahead to the side of the main road – something long indicated beforehand by signs there for decades – and we now have a plethora of arrows pointing to the right or left indicating driveways from where people can emerge onto the main road from houses nearby.
The astonishing thing is that just as we think that the NZTA cannot possibly think of anything else to put up along the highway from the countryside into Nelson, another set of notices goes up – seemingly almost on a daily base.
This agency is simply wasting money: littering the landscape with visual pollution and inexcusably funded by the government, when the economy is already in dire straits. Time for others to object, too… As for poisoning what the bees feed on – this is utterly destructive and inexcusable.
