Brakes on rural road speed changes
New Plymouth District councillors have rejected the majority of safer speed recommendations given to them, despite staff spending more than four years working on the proposal.
Councillors voted 9-5 against implementing 183 of the 286 recommendations at a meeting last week, throwing out the rural recommendations while opting to support speed limit reductions, mostly to 30kph, around schools and Taranaki Base Hospital.
The decision drew bewildered looks from council staff who had worked on the project since May 2018, when elected members gave them a mandate under the Speed Management guiding principles for the New Plymouth district to start a comprehensive, districtwide speed limit review.
As a road controlling authority, council was required to work towards a reducing death and serious injury crashed by 40% by 2030 as part of transport agency Waka Kotahi’s national safety policy.
It was estimated that adopting the safer speeds review across the entire district would result in a reduction of 70 death and serious injury crashes in the next 10 years.
The council’s guidelines outlined clear rules that stated rural roads that were primarily straight, had good visibility, wide shoulders, and a centre line with physical separation between both lanes of traffic could remain at 100kph.
For roads that met the same criteria but without physical separation, the limit would be reduced to 80kph, while roads that were narrow, windy and had poor visibility should have a speed limit of 60kph.
The review and recommendations had drawn support from police, the former Taranaki District Health Board, cycle lobby groups and representatives from rural schools.
In supporting the council staff’s review, Superintendent Steve
Greally, of the National Road Policing Centre, said it was imperative that speed limits were reduced in a number of areas to lower the fatality and serious injury rate.
‘‘Police support the setting of speed limits in alignment of with safe system principles and the need for our transport system to be forgiving in the event that a mistake is made, and a crash should occur,’’ he said.
There was opposition to the proposal, most notably from
Federated Farmers Taranaki president Mark Hooper, who said there appeared to be a ‘‘knee-jerk’’ reaction by council to speed reductions on rural roads instead of it taking a holistic approach to improving infrastructure.
He said Federated Farmers was concerned that speed reductions were being used as a substitute for spending on sealing and road improvements.
He also believed there was not enough data provided by the council to justify such blanket speed limit reductions on rural roads.
At last week’s meeting, New Plymouth mayor Neil Holdom fully supported a speed reduction around schools, but said there needed to be more consultation and investigation into such a widespread shift across rural roads in the district.
Councillor Marie Pearce said she would not be supporting the speed reductions in rural areas because it would not be policed.
However, the move to scrap so many recommendations did not find favour with outgoing councillor Stacey Hitchcock, who apologised to the council staff who had worked on the project.
‘‘The council had given them the framework to work as a guiding principle,’’ she said. ‘‘Now we are just going to ignore the majority of it?’’
Her comments were backed by Amanda Clinton-Gohdes, who believed they had ‘‘a responsibility to our community’’ to make the changes.
Waka Kotahi referred questions about the decision back to the New Plymouth District Council as it was the road controlling authority for its rural roads.
The approved changes are expected to be made by early next year.