COMMUNITY INTERESTS

• Local authorities would retain their ownership and management rights over amenities in the road corridor, unless they elected not to do so.
• If the local authority did not wish to retain ownership or management rights over amenities, these would pass to the public road company. However, the local authority would be able to resume these rights at any point in the future.
• In urban areas, the local authority could also choose to exercise management responsibility for the entire off-carriageway area in the road corridor. In rural areas, the local authority would be able to negotiate to retain this right through the Corridor Management Agreement.
• A public road company would be required to retain the current bus and high-occupancy- vehicle lanes, bus stops, cycle lanes on the carriageway, and traffic calming, unless the local authority agreed to their removal, or removal was required for the public road company to meet its safety management responsibilities.
• Local authorities would have the ability to reclaim sections of the road corridor, including parts of the carriageway, for 'public space development' purposes - for example, the creation of pedestrian malls and the provision of other amenities.
• There would be a Corridor Management Agreement between each public road company and the local authority, which would cover roads owned by the company.
• In addition, local authorities would own the shares in local road companies, appoint their directors and comment formally on, and be able to require changes to, their Statements of Intent.
• All road service providers would be subject to the Resource Management Act, including the district plans of the areas in which they would operate.

MAINTAINING THE NETWORK

• A public road company would have to retain the physical road network it took over at the time of its establishment.
• The provisions for temporarily or permanently closing roads would be similar to existing provisions.
• All roads a company operated would have to satisfy the criteria contained in the company's safety management system, as approved by the Director of Land Transport Safety.

PRIVACY

• An anonymous purchase option would be required to be made available for any charging system introduced.
• Personal information collected from road users could only be used for road management, road safety and road service revenue collection purposes.
• The disclosure of personal information collected by road service providers would be prohibited, except in specified circumstances.
• The privacy policies of road entities would be required to be available in a publicly accessible document.
• Access to the motor vehicle register would be tightened considerably to improve the privacy of owners of motor vehicles.

UTILITIES' ACCESS TO THE CORRIDOR

• Utility operators' rights to place their distribution assets in the road corridor would remain.
• Utilities would be required to notify, in advance, public road companies of their intention to carry out work, and the public road company would be able to set reasonable conditions.
• Similarly, public road companies would notify, in advance, any affected utilities of their intention to carry out works.
• A national code of practice under the Resource Management Act 1991 would be developed to manage any adverse effects on the broader community of the construction and maintenance activities of utilities and public road companies.

OWNERSHIP AND CONSTRAINTS ON MONOPOLY POWER

Public road companies would be owned by public bodies. The law would preclude their sale. In addition, public road companies and specified road service providers would be:

• Subject to the anti-competitive and consumer protection provisions of existing commercial law (Commerce Act and Fair Trading Act);
• Able to compete with one another in some circumstances. There would be a number of opportunities for competition between a local road company and the state highway operator;
• Subject to an information disclosure regime similar to that applying to electricity line companies;
• Required to restrict their activities to road service provision, and would not be able to have an interest in an intermediary;
• Required to negotiate in good faith with any representative of a significant number of users which wished to agree prices and terms and conditions for road service;
• Subject to the possibility that price control would be imposed;
• Subject to a requirement that all their prices for road use must be consistent with a set of pricing principles contained in regulations made under the proposed legislation;
• Subject to a mechanism to settle disputes over prices that allows recourse to the High Court. The court would be able to strike down prices that were not in conformity with the pricing principles; and
• Required in most circumstances to seek competitive tenders for road construction and maintenance and for the professional services associated with such work.

• COMMUNITY INTERESTS
• MAINTAINING THE NETWORK
• PRIVACY
• UTILITIES' ACCESS TO THE CORRIDOR
• OWNERSHIP AND CONSTRAINTS ON MONOPOLY POWER