50 Victoria Street
Private Bag 6995
Wellington 6141
New Zealand
T 64 4 894 5400
F 64 4 894 6100
18 June 2018
www.nzta.govt.nz
Tom Atkinson
[FYI request #7881 email]
REF: OIA-3843
Dear Tom
Extension of time to respond to request made under the Official Information Act 1982
Thank you for your email of 21 May 2018 requesting the fol owing information under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act):
I would like to have access to raw data concerning motorway onramp signals sufficient to:
- prove or disprove the hypothesis that they assist in improvement highway flows
- use with other data I wil source independantly, prove or disprove the hypothesis that they assist in
reducing C02 emitted by vehicles
- understand the conditions that trigger them to activated and deactivate each day
- be multi-month data sets ideal y with control data from my proposed 5 week test
- understand if this activation is correlated to anything or just put on a timer or set by humans
- have access to activation sensor data / timing data schedule data also to correlate
- be able to count total traffic flows from the data set itself
- be in a format I can open eg, CSV, XLS, SQL, JSON, TXT etc.
- be able to create my own per-minute summaries of traffic flows from the data set, eg "between
2:57pm and 2:58pm the signal was not active and 23 cars went through" etc.
- if you can please assist by helping to create fresh control data using time correlation: manually
disabling **all the mentioned signals weeklong** then a week of space then off then on then off then
back to the status quo meaning on, taking 5 weeks ultimately from start to finish.
- I can use data from the weeks with the signals disabled to discover what happens to the motorways
precisely
- As much as I dislike the signals, perhaps the ensuing Chaos would reenforce they are a good idea to
myself and others? Or perhaps the traffic wil be so much greatly improved by the "stochastic flow" that
we **come to our senses** and disable them permanently?
This letter is to advise you that the NZ Transport Agency is extending the 20 working days available to
respond to your request, as al owed for under section 15A of the Act. We require an additional 20
working days to respond to your request. We wil send you a response on or before 17 July 2018.
The deadline is being extended because of the consultations necessary to make a decision on your
request. A thorough response to your request cannot reasonably be made within the 20 working day
limit.
Under section 28(3) of the Act, you have the right to apply to an Ombudsman for an investigation and
review of the decision to extend this response. For more information, the Ombudsman website is
www.ombudsman.parliament.nz/.
If you would like to discuss the extension with the Transport Agency, please email
[NZTA request email].
Yours sincerely
Leisa Coley
Manager, Ministerial Services
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