College students take on traffic problems

Kerikeri High School geography students are helping the Far North District Council identify and resolve the town’s traffic problems.

Forty-two Year 12 and 13 students wearing high-visibility jackets and armed with pens and clipboards monitored peak traffic flows at a number of Kerikeri’s busiest intersections last week recently, counting the number of vehicles passing each point and noting driver behaviours such as using roundabouts to make U-turns.

Civil engineering company Haigh Workman will use the data to confirm current congestion levels and help model the effects of predicted population and traffic growth. If the results confirm that Kerikeri has major traffic issues, the company will then work on possible solutions for the Council to include in its future Integrated Transport Plan.

The high school’s head of geography and tourism, Dana Boisen, said students often used data from hypothetical scenarios in course work, and the traffic