Te Awa resident Ross Parkes standing on Te Awa Ave that has just increased the speed limit along half the road from 50km/h to 70km/h. Photo / Composite
Te Awa resident Ross Parkes standing on Te Awa Ave that has just increased the speed limit along half the road from 50km/h to 70km/h. Photo / Composite
Half of a local Napier road’s speed limit has jumped from 50km/h to 70km/h, leaving some residents worried about their safety.
A resident living on one of the side streets beside Te Awa Ave, where the change has occurred, has started a petition against the increase.
Ross Parkes describes theincrease as “madness”.
But Napier City Council says it was made to increase the speed limit - on the road they manage – by the Government.
Te Awa Ave runs parallel to State Highway 51 in Napier.
Napier City Council reduced the speed limit of the road in 2022 from 70km/h to 50km/h in response to what it said was the progression of urban development in the area.
The sign on Te Awa Ave from 2019, asking drivers to slow down before a bend in the road near Maraenui Golf Course. Photo / Paul Taylor
But on July 1 this year, the council said it had no choice but to increase the limit again to 70km/h from Awatoto Rd to just past Hurunui Drive.
Napier City Council said in a statement the change in speed limits along the road, plus a 200m section of Tamatea Drive in Poraiti, were mandated by the Ministry of Transport.
“Napier City Council is the responsible road controlling authority and would normally investigate, process, and confirm speed limit changes through a bylaw review.
“However, the speed limit increases on Te Awa Avenue and Tamatea Drive are in response to central Government’s national requirement for recent speed limit reductions to be reversed (on certain road types).”
With housing developments lining both sides of Te Awa Ave, the speed increase has confused and worried nearby residents like Ross Parkes.
Parkes and his family moved into Hunter Drive, part of The Fairways development at Te Awa Estates that intersects with Te Awa Ave, in 2021.
On Monday June 30, Parkes saw 70km/h speed limit signs going up on Te Awa Ave, but not on the corner of his street that comes off Te Awa or others nearby.
Napier City Council sent a letter to residents along Te Awa Ave advising of the increase of speed limit along the street on June 23 this year, but Parkes said he did not receive this letter.
Parkes said there was only one speed limit sign on the corner of one of the four streets that come off Te Awa Ave and he was worried drivers not familiar with the area would think the heavily urban streets would have a speed limit of 70km/h.
“They’ve done it in a really half-assed way,” he said of the signage.
“Our road is now technically a 70k residential street because they’ve only done a couple of signs on Te Awa Ave and not put 50k signs on all these other residential roads.”
The council said the speed change had triggered the installation of additional signs at the interface with side roads with a different limit, which would be installed soon.
Parkes said he was against the council even putting in the signs as he sees it as a ridiculous cost and it was only going to make rolling the speed limit back to 50km/h “where it should be”, even harder.
Parkes has started a petition to Napier City Council and the Government to change the speed limit on the street back to 50km/h.
“This is madness; there is no sensible context that justifies this absolutely ludicrous action and we need your help to convince the bureaucratic nonsense to revert the whole of Te Awa Ave back to 50 kilometres an hour,” he said.
The Ministry of Transport said under the Land Transport Setting of Speed Limits Rule 2024, the Government required road controlling authorities, like Napier City Council, to reverse speed limits on specified roads by July 1, 2025.
“For local councils, this included reversing permanent speed limits of 30km/h on certain local streets, and speed limits on urban connectors that had been lowered from January 1, 2020,“ the ministry said.
“The rule enabled local councils to retain a reduced speed limit if it would be inappropriate to revert to the previous speed limit because of a significant change in the land use adjacent to the road, for example, new housing developments.”
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin and Napier.
