Interim Speed Management Plan
We’re developing a Speed Management Plan for the district that aims to make our roads safer and work towards the national road safety strategy Road to Zero.
The way speed limits are set throughout New Zealand is changing. This means that decisions on speed management are able to be made at a more localised level in the future. Setting safer speed limits to address specific issues and community concerns on our network is something that Council has new systems and tools available to implement.
Road safety goes beyond our obligation to prevent deaths and injuries to improving lives and lifestyles too. By ensuring that everyone feels safe to use our transport network we open up opportunities for a more diverse use of modes and opportunities for improvement in health such as letting children walk, bike or scooter to school. This creation of road networks that allow for easy and multimodal transport use connects people and communities rather than dividing them.
What is being proposed
This plan is our first step on this journey and we’re reviewing speed limits around schools, maraes and some roads of concern so that we can all do our part in improving road safety.
It's important to note that this is a ten year plan - we won't be changing these speed limits overnight. The implementation of these changes will initially focus on schools.
There is more to safer speeds than just speed limits and as such the Draft Interim Speed Management Plan also identifies a number of infrastructure improvements like crossings, islands, road markings, signage and more.
Like the speed limits, these are improvements we'd look to implement over the next ten years, focussing on schools first. Identifying them as part of this plan will help inform our forward planning - like future budgeting processes, and our funding agreements with Waka Kotahi.
Following the Council meeting on 16 May 2023, Council passed a resolution to:
- Lower the speed limit to 30km/hr outside all urban schools
- All rural schools to have a variable speed limit of 40km/hr during the start and end of school, and 100km/hr outside of these times.
A link to the Council Report and meeting minutes can be found on the right hand side of this page under Important Links.
Learn more
We encourage you to read the Draft Interim Speed Management Plan to help inform your submission. This can be found under the documents link on the right hand side of this page. Also check out the FAQs below for other background information that may be helpful in making a submission.
Have your say
The consultation period is open from Thursday 1 June 2023 to Friday 30 June 2023. When you make a submission you can choose if you want to speak to Council at a public hearing which will be held on 18 July 2023.
If you don’t wish to speak, your feedback will be presented to Councillors as part of the Hearings Agenda. Council will consider all submissions. If you choose to speak, you have 10 minutes. All submissions will be publicly available on Council’s website (names and submission only, not contact details). All submitters will receive a response following decisions.
