Tauranga City Council drops Matapihi speed limit to 60km/h

Matapihi resident Scott O'Neil is happy the speed limit will be reduced to 60km/h on the roads his kids, Ethan, 8, and Nixon, 3, use every day. Photo / John Borren

The speed limit on the Matapihi Peninsula will be dropped to 60km/h - a move welcomed by those who have been pushing for the reduction for many years.

Tauranga City Council decided yesterdayto reduce the speed limit from Matapihi Rd near Bayfair Drive, currently an 80km/h zone, and throughout the peninsula, most of which is a 70km/h, to a 60km/h zone.

The decision was made almost two years to the day after 5-year-old Shiria Matehaere was killed in a collision with a ute while riding her bike on Matapihi Rd on April 16.

After her death, the Matapihi community strengthened their efforts to ask the council for safety improvements, including a speed limit reduction.

Yesterday advocates welcomed the council's unanimous decision.

Speaking on behalf of the Te Kura o Matapihi Board of Trustees, Spencer Webster said the kura had been concerned about the safety of students on Matapihi Rd for some time.

"Then one of our students was tragically killed by a motor vehicle not far from the school during one weekend in 2016 which gave even further impetus to the Kura seeking measures to enhance road safety, the speed limit being one of them," Webster said.

Webster said the school was talking to the council about other road safety measures around the kura, some of which had already been adopted.

Greg Milne, chairman of the Matapihi Residents and Ratepayers Association, said he believed there was largely a consensus in the community that lowering the speed limit was the right move.

"Most people at the meetings wanted the limit lowered," Milne said.

He did not agree with some in the community who sought no change to the speed limit in the more rural areas of the suburb.

"Matapihi is quite populated now, how do you tell which bits are the back roads?

"My feeling is that if there is one limit throughout Matapihi then everybody knows."

Council traffic safety engineer Karen Hay said in a report that in the five years between 2013 and 2017 there were 20 crashes on the peninsula, including two deaths and four serious injury crashes.

The council asked the Matapihi community for feedback on the proposal in November and December 2017 and found 87 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposal.

The police, NZ Transport Agency, Road Transport Association NZ and the Automobile Association all supported the change.

The council will pay $6000 to change the speed limit signage in the area.

Carlo Ellis, Matapihi resident and the council's manager of strategic Maori engagement, told the meeting the community would be working with the police to enforce the new limits, as well as "self-enforcing".

"Changing the speed limit is one part of the solution but enforcement will be another part."