Kerre Woodham: An all-out war has been declared on the humble road cone

For your edification this morning, a little history lesson.

In 1940, while working as a street painter for the city of Los Angeles, Charles D. Scanlon designed a hollow conical marker to keep cars from driving over wet paint. And he was the one who painted the rubber traffic cone in 1943.  

In his patent filing, Scanlon explained his three main objectives for his invention were to provide a marker that is readily visible, yet which causes no damage to an automobile if the automobile strikes it; that it may be stacked so as to require a minimum of storage space and to be easily transported; and that it will return to its upright position after a glancing blow and which may be dropped from a moving truck and assume an upright position. Before the cones there were wooden barriers and wooden tripods, and they weren't easily seen. They were often broken. They had to be assembled for each project and they were bulky to store.

So the cone has stayed pretty much as Charles D. Scanlon invented it in 1940.  

It's estimated, according to this website, that there are 140 million traffic cones in use worldwide, and I would say that there are 139 million, 990,000 of them in New Zealand, the rest dispersed around the world.

An all-out war has now been declared on the humble road cone by no less an adversary than Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. He has, in his own words, had a few hissy fits at Auckland Transport and demanded that they reduce an unjustifiable $145 million spend on road cones and traffic management.

Contractors, he says, are taking up more space than is necessary for their own parking, material storage and lunch rooms, increasing the cost of disruption to road users at minimal cost to themselves. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown spoke to the Mike Hosking Breakfast this morning and said what used to be safety at a reasonable cost is no longer the mantra. 

I think it is absolutely worth having a look at seeing whether you need to keep those road cones there. Sometimes they seem to stay there long after the job has been done. No problem at all at looking at traffic management plans, full stop.

$145 million in Auckland alone and this is being replicated right around the country and you will attest to that. Wherever you are you'll know the trucks, you'll know the cones and you will be scratching your head going, why are they there? How can this be justified?

I think as long as we leave the actual personnel alone, these are questions well worth asking. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.