Speed Limit Review - In and Around our Towns

The Council are committed to reviewing speed limits across the District to ensure roads have safe and appropriate speeds for their current use. The current speed limit review focusses mainly on the roads in and around towns and the unsealed roads around Tuahiwi and Ashley areas.

Why:

The review aligns with Road to Zero –the New Zealand Government’s Road Safety Strategy which has a vision where no-one is killed or seriously injured in road crashes. This means that no death or serious injury while travelling on our roads is acceptable.

Speed affects the severity of all crashes. Even when speed doesn’t cause the crash, it’s what will most likely determine the outcome and whether anyone is killed, injured, or walks away unharmed from a crash.

The number of people walking and cycling is increasing across the District. With more people sharing our roads, safety is a high priority. We all have a role to play in making sure our roads are safe.

The Council’s goal is to provide a safe and accessible network of roads, paths, lanes and corridors so people of all ages and abilities can travel around the District.

Background:

Our speed limits do not always reflect the risk on the road. When crashes happen, there are many causes – people make mistakes, the road might be unfamiliar, the weather might be bad. The vast majority of severe casualties are not from extreme high-risk behaviours, but from generally law-abiding people making a simple error.

Implementing safer speed limits on our roads is just one area of focus where we can address harm.

Other areas include improving our roads and roadsides, encouraging the use of safer vehicles and encouraging better driver behaviour.

Council has a wide programme of work addressing all of these areas.

Some of the recent work includes the new Flaxton/Fernside roundabout, delivering road safety programmes in the community such as cycle skills in schools and supporting national advertising around safer road use and vehicles.

We know that people make mistakes and are vulnerable in a crash. Working to address all of these areas over time aims to reduce the impact of those mistakes. The growth in our District has seen our towns expanding and where we previously had higher rural speed limits, we now have increasingly urban residential development with more intersections and access ways. Higher speed limits are no longer appropriate in these areas as the use of the roads change with an increase in traffic volumes and more people walking and cycling.

The proposed speed limit changes also includes some rural residential roads within the district where there have been higher crash rates and risk identified. A reduction in speed along these roads will reduce the impact of crashes if they occur.

Speed limit reviews are carried out under the Land Transport Rule - Setting of Speed Limits 2017 and requires Council to follow the guidance provided in Waka Kotahi’s Speed Management Guide (2016) when proposing changes to speed limits on any local authority road.

Tell us what you think:

We welcome your feedback on the proposed changes to speed limits. You can complete one or more of the surveys below and please let us know your thoughts before Monday 18 October 2021.