Transit’s chainsaw massacre
Following on from yesterday’s post about the matai trees in Haast that were going to be cut down because they were old and rotten, Metiria has just released some photos proving that they are healthy, or at least, they were healthy:
Metiria is worried abut the precedent this sets:
Yet these unique trees, supposedly so rotten they could have fallen onto the road at anytime, will now be milled into timber and possibly sold for a profit.
If Transit can now cut down the giants of our forests because of a potential risk to cars, does this mean all the other magnificent rimu and kahikatea along West Coast highways can be removed? Can Waipoua Forest kauri now be destroyed - and sold - because a car might drive into one?
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July 31st, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Matai tongue and groove flooring looks rather nice though. Had some in a Neil Group Hose in the 1970’s.
Wonder where the timber will end up? Not to bad for boatbuilding. Better then Kauri.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I think they take out trees pre-emptively, the ones judged to come down in storms or big rains. They’re not necessarily rotten trees, just ones judged problematic if they fall. Maybe it’s considered more cost effective to do that than to wait for them to fall and have to clear the road with emergency crews, especially if they are onselling the timber.
What’s not clear is if the trees were in the National Park, or close enough to the road to be outside of DOC control. If it’s the former, then DOC must be giving consent for the trees to be felled, and worse, removed and sold.
They did this kind of felling on the Milford Road a few years back too, but weren’t allowed to remove the trees or sell them. The rationale was tourist safety. Fucking tourism has a lot to answer for.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Trees are living things they germinate, growth, get old, and fall over.
Environmentally and economically it makes sense to accept that they are a resource to be sustainably utilised.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:46 am
It’s a pity they aren’t the same 250 trees struck by cars in fatal crashes so far this mellenium. Maybe the tree felling is an election gimmick by Transit. One tree for each death above the NRSC’s original target for last year.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Just another way to get around the rules against milling native timber stands, which Timberlands got so uppity about.
I’m sure those will fetch a very high price in today’s market, which will just incentivise the removal of more ‘dangerous’ trees. Possibly to fund more roads..
Where’s my backpack? I feel a need to travel urgently, before they’re all gone..
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 am
katie, any tree located in a road reserve is a ‘dangerous’ tree, especially since a high proportion of these collisions result from drivers taking evasive action or being spun around after being hit by another car. That’s particularly bad because many of the safety systems in modern cars are once-only devices like airbags and pretensioners. Driving slowly isn’t that much a help either, at least not if the photo is of the trunks of these trees. That’s very small impact area, much smaller than a crumple zone is designed for.
West Coats highways have received less funding under this Government than under each and every previous Labour government (with the exception of WWII of course). So maybe Transit West Coast Region has got sick of begging Micheal for money and decided to kill two birds with one stone.
If you do travel south please bear in mind that serious crash rate on the Haast-Wanaka highway is 100 times worse than on the Drury-Silverdale highway, despite both being built by the the same organisation during the same decades and despite average speeds being so much lower than in Auckland that “the faster you go the bigger the mess” should actually make the Auckland highway four times dealier then the Haast highway.
Ya better make it quick if you want to enjoy the rickety old Gates Of Haast Bridge shown in Frog’s ealier post:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/07/30/old-matai-make-way-for-campervans /
Transit has a better photo here:
http://www.transit.govt.nz/projects/view_project.jsp?content_type=proj ect&=edit&primary_key=169&action=edit
Actually since the Gates of Haast isn’t in Auckland or Wellington the planning phase isn’t going to start for another two years even though the investigation phase was completed two years ago. Oh well, I guess we can all do what the government is doing and keep our fingers crossed that paleoseismologists are wrong about the probability of the Great Alpine Fault demolishing this bridge within the next five years. You definitely get better odds on lotto.
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:19 am
Kevyn,
With respect, comparing the Haast Highway with the Auckland Southern and Nrthern Motorway is like comparing apples and oranges.
One is a two lane rural highway the other a 4 to 6 lane motorway with full centre and many side crash barriers to contain wayward car drivers. The only head on collisions on the Auckland motorway system is caused by drivers getting onto the system by using an off ramp. (happens maybe once a year).
Where as on the Haast Highway that could be around every corner.
Not to say you dont have a point, maybe you could have used the Waikato Expressway as a better example where four laning and traffic containement sytems has certainly improved the odds of not being killed, enormously.
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:34 am
Gerrit, You do get my point, or most of it. The Auckland motorways were built with run-off areas, clear recovery zones being the technical name. For the last 10 years Transit has been progressively removing obstructions such as deep ditches from the sides of highways with a measurable reduction in fatal crashes due to these obstructions. Obviously that is not a viable option on most of the Haast-Wanaka stratch but it is precisely why Transit needd to move the Bruce Bay section of the highway so that it ism’t “centimeters away from a line of trees” (as frog lovingly described it). While it’s not practical to divide most highways the use of the bumpy motorway lane markings for centrelines and edgelines would probably be almost as effective at reducing headon crashes. Deflector barriers is the most straightforward way of protecting wayward vehicles from hitting trees or the ends of bridges or falling into ravines. The two photos I linked to show the use of that technique on the Gates of Haast bridge. Unfortunately out Transit’s billion dollar construction funding the Government only allows $40 million to be spent on these types of highly effective severity reducing techniques despite the fact that it was the failure to adopt the “forgiving roadsides” like most other OECD countries did in the 1970s that has lead to our road toll becoming one of the worst in the OECD when it had been one of the best until the mid-70s.
It seems the particular bunch of clowns we’ve had in Parliament this decade have found it easier to blame the road toll on bad drivers and continue raking in the dough from tripling the number of infringement fees rather than sacrifice their revenue from the petrol tax for a noble cause.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
Kevyn,
See your point much clearer, thanks.
Was going to suggest the use of the wire barriers for protecting cars from trees (or visa versa) however there is much controversy on their very extensive use on the Waikato Expressway. Great at stopping cars and trucks. Not so good with motorcyclist who tend to get cut in half when confronted by the wire rope barriers (epecially at great speed).
Mind you, while getting cut in half by a wire rope barrier maybe gruesome, I dont think headbutting an armco barrier would be be any less so.
Those rope bariers are pretty unobtrusive visually and take up next to no space.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Didn’t some guys get jail time for taking valuable rocks out of a South Island river?
This seems like the same sort of sacrilege to me. Probably worse.
How much confidence can we have in DOC if they can’t identify a healthy tree?
I would bet a high proportion of Haast highway accidents are caused by foreigners on the wrong side of the road, rather than being caused by trees.
It would be better to have a few barriers erected rather than this desecration.
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
I agree that safety barriers are a better option than cutting down trees. The cost seems to vary between 10 per metre for wire rope barriers up to 100 metre for conventional steel barriers, depending on the roadside stability and slope, etc. But with this government prioritising commuter travel time savings ahead of saving the lives of country folk and holidaying city slickers that isn’t likely to happen at an acceptable rate.
Engineers have created this aestheticly pleasing safety barrier as used on Avonside Drive.
http://www.csppacific.co.nz/Lograil_Safety_Barrier.htm
The technical drawings reveal that the mounting system is what makes it different from the old fashioned wooden fences still masquerading as safety barriers on many country roads and some state highways.