Whanganui community successful in keeping lower speed limit for section of State Highway 3

The speed limit on SH3 Whanganui from Blueskin Rd to Tirimoana Place will remain at 80km/h. Photo / NZME

A section of State Highway 3 through Whanganui will retain its 80km/h speed limit after six weeks of public consultation on a move to change it back to 100km/h.

Under the Setting of Speed Limits Rule 2024, 87 sections of state highway that have had their speed limits lowered since January 2020 were subject to auto-reversal by July 1, 2025.

Under the 2020-23 Labour Government, blanket speed limit reductions were put in place, but the National Party pledged to reverse the reductions in an “Accelerate NZ” campaign.

Forty-nine of the sections were opened to public consultation to gauge support to maintain the lower limits.

Of more than 1000 submissions about the section of SH3 from north of Blueskin Rd to north of Tirimoana Place, 55% wanted it to be kept at the lower speed limit of 80km/h.

Only six of the 49 roads under consultation had enough public support to keep their lower speed limits.

The other five were SH30 Rotorua South, SH5 Waipā State Mill Rd, SH5 Waiotapu, SH3 Palmerston Northeast to Whakarongo, and SH94 Homer Tunnel to Milford Sound.

The support to maintain the lower limit for SH3 Whanganui included two petitions with more than 400 signatures.

Whanganui Mayor Andrew Tripe could not be contacted for comment but said in a social media post that the lower speed limit being maintained was “great news”.

“Increasing speed limits in the right stretch of road makes sense but in this case common-sense prevailed,” he wrote.

The speed limit on SH3 Whanganui was lowered after a review in 2019 found that changes to the area, including more residences, meant the higher speed limits were no longer appropriate.

There had been 21 crashes on the stretch of road between 2009 and 2018, resulting in two fatalities.

Whanganui Deputy Mayor Helen Craig said the initial speed limit reduction was safety driven.

“The speed limit reduction was driven by local feedback of those in the area and those using the roads, so it was purely driven by safety, not some ideological belief in reducing speed limits,” Craig said.

“I think the community have spoken again and said in this particular area we need to have those speed limits at a sensible level.”

For the 2.7km of road affected, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi estimated that, at the lower speed limits, only 21 seconds would be added to the average travel time.

The 2019 review also determined that the new speed limits were expected to reduce the number of crashes by 16%.

The section of road from north of Tirimoana Place to north of Blueskin Rd was reduced to 80km/h from 100km/h, and the adjoining section from south of Turere Place to north of the Tirimoana Place/Great North Rd intersection was reduced to 50km/h from 70km/h.

The latter 0.77km section’s speed limit is now being consulted on as one of 16 “urban connectors”.

The consultation closes on May 14.

If less than half of the submitters support maintaining the lower 50km/h limit, the road will automatically return to 70km/h by July 1.

Olivia Reid is a multimedia journalist based in Whanganui.