All over Auckland, on more than 1500 local streets, new signs have been appearing. In most cases, the signs announce a new speed limit: where the limit was 30km/h, it is to be raised to 50km/h. The exercise is not a cheap one: Auckland Transport has budgeted $8.8 million of ratepayers’ money, but it would not be a surprise to see the bill creep over $10 million.
It’s all a consequence of the Land Transport Rule Setting of Speed Limits 2024, known as the Speed Rule 2024. This regulatory stinkbomb – 57 pages that fairly groan with unreason and ambiguity – was left behind by former minister of transport Simeon Brown, for whom cars going as fast as possible everywhere was a kind of holy mission, a cultural statement, a cleansing of wokeness. It was finalised in January, the month he left to become Health Minister.
The rule sets out expectations for “road controlling authorities”, which in most places are elected councils but in Auckland is Auckland Transport. A report received last October by AT’s board estimated as many as 1800 roads in the city met the definition of a “specified road” in the then-draft Speed Rule. That is, they were a “residential or neighbourhood street” where the speed limit had been reduced from 50km/h to 30km/h since 2020 and where “the reason or one of the reasons for setting that speed limit was because there is a school in the area”.
Yes, you did read that correctly: permanent speed limits must be raised – apart from outside schools at drop-off and pick-up times – on streets if a “reason” for them being previously reduced was the presence of a school in the area. “There are concerns,” the advisory note continued, “that speed reversals may impact the number of road deaths and serious injuries.”
The Speed Rule doesn’t venture to define what a “reason” is, but when AT consulted communities on reducing speed limits in recent years, the information it published for most streets mentioned local schools. That, AT’s board concluded, constituted a “reason”.
Under the new rule, the area outside schools – the road within a 300m radius of the gate – must become a variable speed zone, keeping its 30km/h speed limit only for 35 minutes at either end of the school day. That’s an additional set of signage, at an estimated cost to Aucklanders of $16.7 million. Some of these new signs pack in six lines of fine print that drivers are apparently expected to interpret while travelling at 50km/h.
A handful of exceptions underline the absurdity of it all. Richmond Road School in Ponsonby will be keeping its full-time 30km/h limit because the road it’s on, Douglas St, is one where consultation documents used slightly different language to those for other old, narrow streets nearby. That is, they didn’t mention schools. (The Speed Rule allows schools to keep their permanent 30km/h limit if the limit on the adjoining road was set before October 2024 and it is not a “specified road”.)
Local residents spotted the difference and successfully argued to keep their lower speed limits, but in general, communities have not been consulted on the reversals and there is no requirement to do so. Yet Transport Minister Chris Bishop has told Parliament he would not block Hamilton City Council from consulting its community. Dunedin City Council has taken a more narrow interpretation of the rule and plans to reverse the speed limit on only six roads.
It may be that AT inadvertently and in good faith created its own problem by mentioning schools nearly every time it talked to communities about safer speed limits. But the agency seems set on making the worst of things. Within the next year, it will be remade, with its policy, planning and decision-making powers given to Auckland Council itself. At this point, that can’t come soon enough.
