What is happening to speed limits?

On 21 March 2024, the Minister of Transport the Hon. Simeon Brown said “the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024 (Rule 2024) will be signed into law later this year to ensure that any new speed limits consider “… the economic impact of any changes, the views of road users and local

communities, and changes to safety” 1.

The Minister’s Rule 2024 aims to boost the economy by allowing fast speeds on roads built for speed without reducing road safety. For example, it would require vehicles to only travel slowly past schools for brief time periods when kids are being dropped-off and picked-up but allow faster speeds past schools outside those times.

The Ministry of Transport invited feedback on Rule 24 until 11 July 2024 and there have been some changes. For example, it will not require RCAs (Road Controlling Authorities) to file a 10-year vision or to take a whole-of-network approach as required under the old Rule. Instead, it proposes analysis of speed limit changes on a road-by-road basis. Rule 24 makes regular speed management plans voluntary for RCAs rather than mandatory as at present and to set the speed limit using the new speed limit classifications. A CBA (Cost Benefit Analysis) provides information to decision-makers on how their speed control decisions might impact on travel time, road safety and implementation costs.

Minister Brown wrote to RCAs encouraging them to wait for Rule 24 to be released before

putting more effort into speed changes.

What’s FNDC’s view?

The FNDC resolved at its 8 February 2024 meeting to go ahead with funding for speed reduction

plans already underway for about three hundred local roads in Northland 2. Mayor Moko Tepania and deputy

mayor Kelly Stratford said they resented central government meddling in local government plans for

speed controls, that they had already consulted with the community on speed control plans for roads in Kerikeri and the Bay of Islands and the funding had already been allocated by Council to implement the speed limit changes on the roads.

Two councillors were concerned that any speed reductions in place could be reversed by Rule 24 which would waste rate payer funds spent on speed reduction plans and new road signage. Waka Kotahi in a meeting with Mayor Tepania assured him the speed plans already agreed should be unaffected by Plan 24 3. However, the Council’s planned consultation process for the 2024-2027 Regional Speed Management Plan has been put on hold until Rule 24 is released.

Kapiro Road & Speed

We congratulate the Council for not letting Wellington disrupt Northland’s speed reduction plans. Mayor Tepania is correct about the many years of consultations. Some of us have personal experience making presentations about reducing speed along Kapiro road at Council meetings in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023. Kapiro Road is classified as a rural connector road with a current speed limit of 100 kph. Its average daily traffic flow is very high, reported as more than 2,000 vehicles per week, the second heaviest connector road of the two hundred roads

reviewed 4. Most vehicles already travel well below the 100 kph speed limit because of Kapiro road’s many

domestic driveways, schools, horticultural land driveways and slow-moving equipment using the road, commercial activities such as garden centre and vehicle repair garage, obscured intersections, lack of pavements, swimming school, sun strike and deep ditches on either side.

Car crashes and accidents previously reported include sadly the death of a teacher out cycling. One resident was so frustrated by the lack of action over many years to lower the speed limit that she took matters into her own hands and pasted 80 kph over the existing 100 kph signs.

Vehicle traffic is set to increase further as housing density and other activities increase along Kapiro road. Many of us know that the speed limit should have been lowered years ago.

We are pleased the Council decisions will not be over-ruled by Wellington’s bureaucratic delays.

1 Hon Simeon Brown and Hon David Seymour. 21 March 2024. Direction of new speed limits announced.

2 Susan Botting, Local Democracy Reporter, 16 February 2024.

3 FNDC. 26 February 2024. Speed limit changes stay on track.

4 Northland Transportation Alliance. 16 Oct 2019. Regional Speed Limit Review of Okaihau-Kaeo-Waimate Area.