Waka Kotahi to review nearly 1800 submissions on 80kph speed proposal for Napier-Taupō Road
Thursday, 5 August 2021
Close to 1800 people shared their views to Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency’s proposal to lower the speed limit from 100kph to 80kph on a stretch of notorious highway
The consultation period ended on June 6, with 1791people providing feedback on proposed speed limits for a section of the Napier-Taupō Road (State Highway 5) from Rangitaiki to Esk Valley.
“We know this has generated a lot of interest from the community, and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to provide feedback,” regional relationships director Linda Stewart said.
“We’ve gathered valuable local knowledge about how people use the roads and their concerns, and we will take this into consideration, alongside our technical assessment of the roads, when making our final decisions.”
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Stewart said it had taken some time to review the submissions which had been sent in via the website, emails, post and in-person, and the agency was now analysing that feedback and finalising technical assessments.
Waka Kotahi figures showed that between 2010 and 2019, 16 people were killed in crashes on SH5 and another 75 seriously injured.
If Waka Kotahi decided to proceed with speed limit changes on SH5 and on State Highway 51 – between Waipatu in Hastings and Marine Parade in Napier – it expected to introduce the changes by the end of the year, Stewart said.
“The community will be informed well in advance if any speed changes are to be introduced.”
Since the launch of the Hawke's Bay Speed Review consultation, people also raised questions about the likely increase in travel times if lower speeds were put in place.
An initial calculation method showed a shortest time of 41 seconds, and the longest being 11 minutes.
Part of the technical information used to establish this was an overall mean speed that was calculated at 81kph, even though the posted speed limit was 100kph.
Regular drivers of SH5 were not convinced by the 41-second time difference, leading Waka Kotahi to review the initial data by using a larger timeframe of three months in 2020 to measure speeds, and making analysis sectionsmuch smaller across the focused length of highway.
By using newer information, the overall mean speed was recalculated at 84kph if travelling south and 85kph if heading north.
Final results of the review indicated that most travellers would experience a longer drive time of between four and 11 minutes on SH5.
Waka Kotahi received 300 submission on the SH51 proposal.