Locals plead for speed limit cut on Kerikeri's Kapiro Rd — again

Niall Mayson is calling for the speed limit on Kapiro Rd, north of Kerikeri, to be cut from 100km/h to 70km/h before any more preventable injuries occur. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Residents of a busy semi-rural road north of Kerikeri says it's time the council stopped "sitting on its hands" and reduced the speed limit before anyone else is hurt or even killed.

Niall Mayson, who has lived on Kapiro Rd for the past five years, has so far gathered 223 signatures in a petition on change.org to have the current 100km/h limit lowered to 70km/h.

His campaign is only the latest of many. In 2017 one resident became so exasperated with a spate of serious crashes at a Kapiro Rd black spot she made her own speed limit signs. Her 80km/h signs were removed within days.

"People have been trying to get the speed limit lowered for 30 years and nothing's changed. The people on the corner have had 26 cars through their fence," Mayson said.

Kapiro Rd was a semi-residential road with a lot of activity. It had orchard workers coming and going, a childcare centre, a plant retailer, a large packhouse, people travelling to and from work, and school bus stops.

"So 100km/h is just not appropriate. That speed limit might be appropriate on state highways, and not even all of the state highway network, but it's certainly not suitable for a community connector road like Kapiro Rd."

The petition called for a 70km/h limit because that was the OECD recommendation for rural roads without a median barrier. The OECD is a group of developed countries including New Zealand.

This crash involving an overtaking vehicle and a truck carrying gas cylinders forced the evacuation of a Kapiro Rd childcare centre. Photo / Peter de Graaf

Mayson said the Waka Kotahi database showed 123 vehicles had been involved in 83 reported crashes on Kapiro Rd from 1991 to the start of 2022. Of those, 44 had resulted in minor injuries, nine in serious injuries, and two in deaths. The fatals had occurred in dry, sunny conditions.

In its own document about speed limit changes in 2021 the Far North District Council said speed was a factor in 30 per cent of fatal and serious injury crashes in the district.

"We just want the council to stop sitting on their hands. They say they want safer roads, and the quickest and most cost-effective way to do that is by changing the speed limit.

"We don't want more reports and consultation — there's been plenty over the past 30 years — and we don't want them to waste a whole lot of ratepayer money widening berms and installing barriers if they can just change the signs," Mayson said.

"While they twiddle their thumbs, and come up with more policies and documents, more preventable injuries will occur."

The aftermath of a 2019 crash at a Kapiro Rd blackspot. Photo / Peter de Graaf

The justification sometimes given for maintaining the 100km/h limit was time-saving for motorists.

However, Mayson's calculations showed dropping the speed limit to 70km/h would result in an increased journey time of just 52 seconds for motorists driving the full 5.8km from State Highway 10 to Landing Rd. Driving half the length of Kapiro Rd at the lower limit would add 26 seconds.

The locals, orchard workers and childcare centre parents who had signed the petition weren't concerned about an extra 50-odd seconds.

"Those are the people the council should be listening to, not people from out of town who want to save a tiny amount of time," he said.

The council investigated dropping Kapiro Rd's speed limit in 2015 following earlier calls for change.

However, the proposal was rejected after a traffic engineer's report found 100km/h was appropriate — even though the limit on nearby Waipapa Rd, with a similar mix of homes, industry and packhouses, is 80km/h.

In 2017 Kapiro Rd resident Nicole Roach took matters into her own hands by changing speed limits signs to show 80km/h instead of 100km/h. Photo / Peter de Graaf

A district-wide review of speed limits around the Far North started in 2019 with the roads around Kāeo, Waipapa, Waimate North and Ōkaihau.

In those areas the limit on most sealed rural roads was dropped to 80km/h with 60km/h the new limit for most unsealed roads.

The change was not universally welcomed with vandals wrecking tens of thousands of dollars' worth of new road signs between Ōkaihau and Kerikeri.

The next areas to be reviewed were Kaitaia-Awaroa and Broadwood-Kohukohu in 2021.
The Bay of Islands, including Kapiro Rd, is next in line but the process appears to have slowed.

A council spokesman said community consultation on proposed speed limit changes for the Bay of Islands would start shortly after the local body elections in October.

The exact timing would be up to the incoming council, he said.

Recent crashes on Kapiro Rd include a collision between an overtaking vehicle and a truck carrying gas cylinders, which forced the evacuation of Nuture by Nature childcare centre.

In 2015 a 6-year-old girl was one of three people injured when an overtaking ute collided with a turning sprayer.

Speed was the main factor in a 2013 crash in which a car became airborne and flew over a row of boulders. The driver was trapped and soaked in petrol with his upside-down car wedged against an electric fence.

Drink-drivers were responsible for the deaths of a motorcyclist in 2017 and a teacher riding his bicycle in 2014.