Harry’s new role is Road Safety Director for the Transport Agency, effective from 1 July. This is a full-time role which is looking to achieve greater results from our road safety programme.
“For me this is a tremendous opportunity to work in an area that I am passionate about. While we have made progress in road safety we can and must do better,” Harry says.
For the next 18 months David Silvester will be the Freight Portfolio Director at the Transport Agency. David is the Transport Agency’s National Manager Planning based in Wellington and has had a leadership role within the organisation’s freight portfolio for the past few years, including managing the roll out of HPMV and 50MAX and taking a leading role in the road rail integration priority.
“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to take up the reins and continue the good work that Harry has done in freight,” David says.
“We’re lucky to have a great team at the Transport Agency and a strong relationship with our partners in the industry so we’re well positioned to continue delivering on the Government’s goal of improving safety and driving economic growth through a more efficient freight system.”
Together with KiwiRail, the Transport Agency’s current freight priority is integrating road and rail to achieve greater freight efficiency. The aim of this priority is to ensure road and rail networks are planned and managed in such a way that optimises the public investment in the freight network and supports the development of efficient and safe road, rail and inter-modal connections.
With Harry stepping away from Freight, the Transport Agency’s road-rail work will be led by Tommy Parker, General Manager of Highways and Network Operations, who alongside Harry has been the co-lead for the priority since it was announced last year.
Seeing first-hand the tragic impact of death and serious injury on our roads is motivation to get the best possible result road safety result from the Transport Agency’s safety programmes, Harry says.
“What strikes me about road safety is that much of the time we’re not talking about bad people or bad drivers. We’re talking about ordinary people who can make a simple mistake which has tragic consequences. We need to look at every opportunity to lessen the effect of these consequences so that fewer Kiwi families will experience the terrible effects of death and injury on our roads.”