Public largely in favour of more 'ambitious' speed reductions around Nelson

Wednesday, 9 September 2020

Most submissions were in favour of reducing the CBD speed limit to 30kmh, and many asked for more streets to be added to the list for reduction.

The public largely supports lowering speed limits in the city and on some residental streets, but they want more roads included than those proposed by the Nelson City Council earlier this year.

The council's infrastructure committee met to hear submissions on the proposal on Wednesday.

The proposal put out for consultation included reducing central city speed limits to 30kmh, and reducing speed limits on 36 residential streets which had no footpaths.

There were hundreds of written submissions, mostly for but including some against the proposal, but only a few spoke at the meeting which was held over Zoom to allow for social distancing.

Bernie Goldsmith, director and driver of taxi company SafeCabs, said decreasing speed limits would cut into the profitability of transport workers’ driving.

* A vision for the central city

* Wellington City councillors unanimously agree to 30kmh speed limits on central city streets

The lone speaker against the proposal was Bernie Goldsmith, director of the SafeCabs taxi company.

“I've been working the roads for the past eight years, driving between 50 to 70 hours a week, every week, day and night, so I kind of know how the city moves,” she said.

“One of the two issues you bring up is safety and efficiency on our roads, but when I look at the document, over the last five years zero people have been in accidents that were concerned with speed, so I don't think speed is a factor here.”

David Marsh said Springlea Heights (middle) and Farleigh Street (left) both had “substantial inclines” and blind corners and were dead ends, so having a 50kmh speed limit was dangerous despite the footpaths available.

She said transport workers used “common sense” in the CBD, and didn’t need a law telling them to drive at 30kmh as they already drove between 30 to 40kmh when necessary.

“The time won't stop, we will still work 70 hours, but if you reduce the speed we will just make less money, which means we will probably decide to close our businesses.

“A lot of us transport people are struggling as it is, there's no more hours that we can work.”

However, other submitters called for a more ambitious speed reduction than that proposed by the council.

A graph from a Nelson City Council agenda showing pedestrian risk of death/serious injury vs car speed. Risk increases dramatically between 30kmh and 50kmh.

David Marsh said the criteria for consideration needed to be widened to include cul-de-sacs, streets with only one footpath which started on one side of the road but then crossed to the other, and roads with blind corners.

He said as coordinator of a neighbourhood support group, he had canvassed residents in Springlea Heights and Farleigh St to put together his submission.

“I did want to bring to your attention that I believe your criteria are not wide enough to include roads which have specific dangers,” he said.

“Both Springlea Heights and Farleigh St are on substantial inclines … Springlea Heights has only got a pathway on one side. My house, to cross over from my house as a pedestrian … I am completely blind to any drivers coming down that road.

“This would not meet your criteria because it's got a pathway on one side, but it's incredibly dangerous and there have already been a number of near misses.”

He said having a speed limit of 50kmh was an “incitement” to drive faster than necessary on dead-end streets.

Other submissions requested the inclusion of Tosswill Rd due to its steepness and blind corners.

Bevan Woodward spoke on behalf of the Bike Nelson Bays group proposing a 30kmh speed limit for all urban streets.

“We support the amendments as proposed, but we do have some concern that the level of ambition appears low,” he said.

“We really want to take this opportunity to talk about … 30kmh speed limits as the default for all urban streets.”

He said any inconvenience to drivers would be offset by more people taking up walking and cycling if the streets were safer for active transport users.