Mobile speed camera will be kept busy

By JASON COLLIE transport reporter

The bad news for Auckland motorists is that police are doubling the number of places they park to catch speedsters. The good news is that they will actually have less chance of getting caught.

While police can now station their mobile speed camera on 22 more sites around the city, with just the one camera covering more than 50 locales, speeding drivers are much less likely to get snapped.

The new sites include heavy traffic areas like Quay St, Stanley St, Tamaki Drive, Jervois Rd and College Hill.

Automobile Association spokesman George Fairbairn told the Herald that it was likely the new camera sites were not a "revenue-gathering" ploy, because there was just one camera covering the city.

"With no increase in numbers of speed cameras available, the probability of being caught may lessen if there are more sites being established."

Road signs designating the new spots as speed camera areas are more likely to discourage speedsters than the speed camera itself.

The new sites - classified as "danger hotspots" - were chosen after analysing crash and speed statistics from the Land Transport Safety Authority.

"They were never intended to be put in places where they were a so-called revenue-gathering exercise," said Mr Fairbairn.

"So, provided the new sites were put in place to monitor speeds in high-risk accident areas, that is acceptable.

"But if the basis for their selection was found to be by some other means, that raises doubt as to why they are there."

The authority's Auckland regional manager, Peter Kippenberger, said that while Auckland City was "first out of the blocks," the authority had undertaken to organise a review of the rest of the region and Northland within the next three months.

Superintendent Dick Trimble, strategic traffic manager for North Shore, Waitakere and Rodney, said the review of the rest of Auckland may also mean removing speed camera sites - as well as adding more - if crash numbers had fallen in those monitored areas.

He said there were 31 mobile speed cameras and 13 fixed cameras spread across New Zealand.

His area had three mobile cameras and two fixed, Auckland City had one mobile and one fixed and Counties Manukau had two mobile and one fixed.

The new mobile speed camera sites in Auckland City will be on:

Quay St, Stanley St, Tamaki Drive, Taniwha St, Morrin Rd, Tripoli Rd, Ireland Rd, Pah Rd, Mt Eden Rd, Hillsborough Rd, Richardson Rd, Donovan St, White Swan Rd, Blockhouse Bay Rd, Great North Rd, Carrington Rd, Sandringham Rd, Jervois Rd and College Hill.