Waka Kotahi accuses Hawke's Bay leaders of putting efficiency ahead of lives
Thursday, 3 February 2022
An accusation by a Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency executive that Hawke’s Bay leaders were putting efficiency ahead of the safety of drivers, made over a video link from a train she was on, did not go down terribly well.
The transport agency’s director of regional relationships Linda Stewart made the remark following a forthright speech made by the leader of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Transport Committee, Martin William, on Thursday.
The committee, which includes the region’s council leaders, police, iwi, Waka Kotahi and others, was holding an extraordinary meeting to discuss Waka Kotahi's decision to reduce the speed limit on a 76km stretch of the Napier-Taupō Road (State Highway 5) from 100kmh down to 80kmh.
The meeting saw Stewart explain the rationale for the decision, which came primarily down to safety and the “indisputable” fact that regardless of what caused a crash, speed made the outcome worse.
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Williams, speaking after two hours of discussion, summarised the situation by saying everyone wanted the road to be safer, but to achieve that by only reducing the speed limit was “a cop out”, and the region deserved better.
Williams, a lawyer with 20 years experience in resource management and local government law, said SH5 was not just a regional lifeline, “but the very aorta vena cava of the inter-regional transport system”.
“It is as important to us as the Auckland harbour bridge is to Auckland” and the consequences the lower speed limit would have on freight into and out of the region did not appear to have been considered, he said.
In the past ten years “Auckland's got the holiday highways, Wellington's nearly got Transmission Gully, Taranaki’s going to get the Mt Messenger bypass… Manawatū’s getting a new corridor to replace the gorge, Waikato has the bypass… Bay of Plenty has the Eastern Arterial you can go 110kmh on. What do we get? Safety improvements and a speed limit reduction… We don’t see that as fair,” Williams said.
“What we need is a fair share of Crown investment in our region and we as leaders must demand that… safety’s important, but you don’t just address it through speed,” he said.
Stewart, appearing on screen from a train, said “I have to say I’m a little bit perplexed… I’ll reframe that. I’m disappointed that regional leaders would value time efficiency more than people’s lives”.
Her remark prompted mutterings and rolled eyes among the committee members.
“We know that we can’t do everything in a safe system all at once and we have to do what we can immediately and then plan for the medium and long term to reduce deaths on your roads”.
She called on the leaders to “make the tough decisions that are in front of us to reduce deaths and serious injuries on your roads”.
Williams replied that “No-one here is anti-road safety. It's a question of method. To suggest any one of us places efficiency over lives is really off the mark. It’s not one or the other”.
The committee voted to submit a position statement to Waka Kotahi opposing the decision to make the speed limit change.
It requested Waka Kotahi to present its detailed technical report underlying its decision to reduce the speed limit and advised the agency it was pursuing legal options to have the decision set aside.
It also asked the agency to formally commit to a SH5 business case for improvements to the road that would enable the current 100kmh speed limit to be retained, and for that business case and funding to be confirmed by the end of June.