Motutere Top 10 Holiday Park manager Julia Hitchcock. Photo / Brent Kenny
The Motutere Top 10 Holiday Park straddles State Highway 1 on the southern shores of Lake Taupō. It’s a popular spot, with all-day sun and beautiful sunsets, shade trees, a boat ramp and one of the best swimming beaches on the lake.
Holidaymakers flock there for all kinds of watersports, from fishing to kayaking, waterskiing and stand-up paddleboarding. At peak times, the campsites are full on both sides of the road.
Vehicles towing caravans and boats pull out directly on to the highway.
Children and other campers walk across the highway hundreds of times every day. There is no pedestrian crossing.
The highway is the main freight route through the central North Island and around one in six vehicles using it is a freight truck.
On May 22, the NZ Transport Agency raised the speed limit to 100km/h.
The motorcamp is just south of Te Poporo, better known as Bulli Point, a large rock face with deep water beneath which has long been a favoured site for jumping into the lake.
The road around Bulli Point and on to Hallets Bay is so narrow and has so many tight corners trucks have difficulty passing each other. Near the point, there is almost no shoulder for people to walk on from the campground or their parked cars.
The speed limit there has also gone up to 100km/h, as it has on most of the highway connecting Taupō and Tūrangi.
Motutere is the place where, one night in 1995, a child was killed when a speeding driver lost control on the corner leading into the motorcamp, crashing into tents with people sleeping in them.
Until 2020, the speed limit remained 100km/h. Between 2000 and August 2023, there were 284 crashes reported on the 10km stretch of road from Motutere to Hallets Bay. Nine were fatal and 22 others were serious.
Several trucks have crashed, spilling logs and other loads. One of them, in 2022, deposited a bright-red slurry of krill oil and milk powder into the lake.
The Waikato Regional Council considers the road one of its top priorities for improvements, but neither it nor NZTA has the money to do the work.
Despite everything, the speed limit remained at 100km/h until 2020. But that year a long campaign by locals succeeded in getting it reduced to 80km/h.
Campground owner Daniel Tilton told the Taupō and Tūrangi Herald, “Hundreds of park patrons signed our petition. We have been active supporters of the speed reduction over the past three years. The outcome goes to show that persistence and people power pay off in the end.”
NZTA, then known as Waka Kotahi, supported them. It said later, “At the time [2020], the community agreed speed limits seemed too high, particularly through the lakeside settlements, and the mix of pedestrians, cyclists, tourists, trucks, buses, campervans and people towing boats and trailers created safety issues for everyone, especially during peak summer months … A large majority of submissions supported lower speeds along the full corridor.”
This included Motutere and the nearby villages of Waitahanui, Waitetoko, Tauranga-Taupō and Motuoapa.
The AA supported the lower limit and the NZ Police were strongly in support.
“There is good evidence that this will improve the safety of all road users on these road sections,” the police submitted.
The Road Transport Forum, representing trucking companies, went further: it advocated for a 60km/h limit through all those villages.
In 2022, following a new Waka Kotahi review initiated by the Labour Government, that idea was adopted and the speed limit dropped to 60km/h. This has now been abandoned.
The return to a 100km/h speed limit at Motutere follows the National-led Government’s adoption of a new Speed Rule in September last year.
The Herald asked the Minister of Transport, Chris Bishop, why a 100km/h limit had been applied to a road with camping sites on either side and whether the inherent dangers of the road should be considered.
His office replied, “These questions are best answered by NZTA.”
A spokesperson for NZTA confirmed that the 100km/h speed limit had been set under the Government’s new Speed Rule. That rule, it said, requires roads where speed limits were lowered under the previous Government to “automatically revert to previous higher speed limits”.
He added that the rule specifies public consultation was “the only factor NZTA could take into account” in deciding whether to exempt a road from this automatic reversal.
Earlier this year, NZTA carried out six weeks of consultation on 49 sections of state highway, to gauge public support for the changes.
Based on the feedback, higher speed limits are now being introduced on 43 of those 49 locations.
This includes the road past Motutere and Bulli Point, which attracted 854 responses, of which only 37% favoured retaining the 60km/h limit.
The Herald asked if public safety should have been considered.
The NZTA spokesperson reiterated that under the new rule, “the consultation result was the only factor NZTA could take into account in its decision-making for the speed reviews at these locations”.
As the official road-controlling authority for state highways, NZTA has a statutory duty to make the roads safe. But it does this within the policy framework established by the Government.
The local Taupō MP (and Cabinet minister) Louise Upston referred to this earlier in the year. “We must consider the safety of road users and pedestrians alongside efficiency,” she said.
“NZTA has a responsibility to keep people safe and safety will always be a priority when making decisions about speed limits on our roads.”
But she supports the higher speed limit. In April, she announced on Facebook, “The speed limit on SH1 between Taupō and Tūrangi will change back to 100km/h from 80km/h on 31 May. Great news!”
“Safety is important on roads,” said Minister Bishop recently, responding to complaints about the new rule.
“We are focused on drugs and alcohol, the leading factors in road deaths. We are also encouraging safer driver behaviour, promoting safer vehicles, and improved road infrastructure.”
When the Cabinet adopted the new Speed Rule last year it had before it papers showing that while alcohol and drugs are a “leading factor”, so is speed.
For example, data from the International Transport Forum, reported by the Ministry of Transport, shows that in 2021, speed contributed to 109 fatal crashes, while alcohol and drugs contributed to 113.
The Cabinet papers also showed that support for higher speed limits is highest in rural areas, even though that is where 68% of road fatalities occur.
Taupō is part of this. A 2020 report by the Taupō District Council named this region, along with the Far North and Western Bay of Plenty, as one of the three worst provincial areas in the country for deaths on state highways.
Meanwhile, NZTA has advised that in 16 locations where there was “strong community and stakeholder feedback on a preference to retain the lower speeds”, the new Speed Rule allowed it to do “a full speed review”.
This included “looking at technical, safety, cost and economic data, alongside consultation feedback, before being able to confirm final speed limit outcomes”.
As a result, lower speed limits have been retained in 13 of the 16 locations, mainly on roads leading into and out of small towns.
Why didn’t that happen for the highway at Motutere Holiday Park?
Because despite the overwhelming community support for a lower speed limit in 2020, a “full speed review” couldn’t be done unless that same support was shown this year. And that didn’t happen.
Simon Wilson is a senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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