Speed limit changes: The slower Auckland Transport goes, the bigger the mess

Monday, 16 September 2019

Auckland Transport has announced a plan to decrease speed limits around the city.

OPINION: We know all the slogans about speed and road safety – 'Speed kills'; 'The faster you go, the bigger the mess'.

They have been accepted almost without question through decades of gruesome footage used in advertising aimed at saving lives.

Auckland Transport's board needs to remember them when it sits next month to consider whether and how to implement one of its biggest road safety initiatives, the reduction of speed limits on nearly 800 roads across the region.

The council agency's warning of a slight delay to the long-running by-law change – and the possibility that some or all of the reductions may be dumped – has rightly caused alarm.

Speed limits on nearly 800 local roads are proposed to be cut in a by-law change

* Auckland speed limit cut to cost ratepayers $24m

* Targeted approach to proposed rural Auckland speed reductions 'vital' for public buy-in**

* Nearly 800 Auckland roads could have speed limits lowered

Auckland Transport last year signalled that tackling the region's sharply rising death and serious injury toll on the roads would be a top priority.

One significant part of the new push was the decision to lower speed limits, by length mostly in rural areas, but also much of the CBD.

'Inappropriate speed' was said to contribute to 20 per cent of the 58 killed and 595 seriously hurt last year.

AT has been swamped with 11,700 submissions to a bulk by-law change and dealing with those is part of the delay on a decision.

More worrying is the possible re-calculation of 'benefits' if AT accepts that some speed reductions should be less than first determined or lack community support.

Yes, each change has to be weighed up by a cost-benefit analysis. The dollar value has to stack up. Speed limits can't just be lowered simply because it might make a road safer – AT needs to know how much safer.

Neither the initial calculations nor the submissions have been made public, but AT says they will come decision time in late October.

AT is heading into potentially stormy waters for its reputation on this one.

The plan is to save lives and reduce injury, not design a new footpath to everyone's liking.

How would AT explain that it has dropped a road from the reduction plan due to submissions subsequent to its own expert assessment of the risk?

Whose submissions should be heard anyway? Locals might argue they know their road, but maybe the risk is with those who seldom drive that stretch.

'Evaluating the implications and supporting evidence associated with a wide range of implementation options, including levels of community support, is being thoroughly considered,' was AT's stab at explaining the delay in a media release.

What if the community does not support a reduction proposed by AT? Will that be sufficient grounds not to make a road safer?

Does it really matter that the Automobile Association said the reductions were too large, and 62 per cent of its members surveyed opposed the blanket CBD limit? Or that National's Paul Goldsmith said the plan was driven by 'anti-car zealotry'?

Auckland Transport has, often wrongly, become the city's favourite political punching bag.

Remember the uproar over it not turning up to a public meeting in St Heliers over some local safety improvements and car parking reductions?

If there is any public perception that AT buckles in making the final decisions over life and injury-reducing speed reductions – even if they can't be scientifically and fiscally proven – the agency's leaders might really find themselves on the mat.