Mystery surrounds a tongue in cheek digital billboard placed by an intersection where Waka Kotahi has recently finished work. Junction Road and State Highway 3. Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
A digital billboard poking fun at Waka Kotahi has appeared near an intersection in New Plymouth where its contractors have recently finished work.
The billboard, which is powered by a generator, is sitting on a flatbed ute near the intersection of Junction Road and State Highway 3.
It features several tongue-in-cheek jibes after opening with the message: "Waka Kotahi is proud to present to an intersection near you" over two screens.
The next display is a play on the LV Martin & Son television advertisements of the 80s and 90s whose catch phrase was "It's the putting right that counts".
A subsequent screen with the message "and quality roading workmanship" features a picture of a pothole, while the next reads "bringing much needed safety improvements" illustrated with dozens of road cones.
Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
The messages end with a picture of bank notes and the slogan "your tax $$$ at work".
The SH3/Junction Street intersection works, which began in September and were completed in late December, were part of a wider State Highway 3 and 3A safety improvement project.
The Junction Street works were to eventually include an intersection speed zone - which would reduce the speed limit on the highway to 60km/h when a vehicle was approaching the highway from Junction Street or coming off the highway onto the residential street.
Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Flexible median barriers were also to be installed immediately north of Junction Street and a southbound passing lane which was too short was to be removed.
Soon after work at the intersection was finished a hole formed close to where drivers turn onto the highway and Waka Kotahi installed flexi-markers steering people away from it. The hole is yet to be repaired.
Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
A former New Plymouth District Councillor and long-time car dealer, Shaun Biesiek, lived in the area and used the intersection often.
He did not know who had installed the sign.
"No, no, but they're clever and they're on the money."
Photo: RNZ / Robin Martin
Biesiek said work at the intersection had not lived up to expectations.
"There was a lot of talk about how great the work was, but the workmanship has turned out to be not great because the road is falling apart and the 'safety improvements' had actually made that intersection more dangerous."
He was particularly upset a lane that allowed southbound traffic to exit the highway at Junction Street had been removed as part of the work.
Current councillor Murray Chong has been a vocal critic of NZTA.
He said the sign was not his work but he agreed with the sentiment.
"They really need to pull their head in on many things they're spending money left right and centre on statues and all this sort of thing when they should be spending it on the potholes."
Mayor Neil Holdom, who had also not been shy about criticising the transport agency in the past, said he had no problem with the sign.
"Somebody has obviously got fed up with the state of the roads and found a humorous way of making their point to Waka Kotahi."
He had just returned from Rotorua and said the potholes seemed to miraculously appear once you drove across the border to Taranaki.
Holdom said as long as the sign, which he not seen, was positioned with safety in mind it was a useful way of making at point.
Waka Kotahi has been approached for comment