Councillor questions raising speed limits

By Laura Kvigstad, Auckland Council reporter, funded by New Zealand on Air

An Auckland councillor has urged warning towards growing pace limits that would endanger public security after the Authorities accredited new guidelines.

At a latest assembly of the Auckland Council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee, Auckland Transport (AT) introduced its common replace.

The replace got here on the again of the Authorities approving new pace restrict guidelines, reversing the earlier authorities’s reductions.

By July 2026, underneath the brand new guidelines colleges could have variable pace limits of 30kph in city areas and 60kph in rural areas throughout peak occasions.

Nationwide highways could permit speeds of as much as 120kph.

It prompted councillor Richard Hills to ask if AT believed there was a case for the council to not observe the Authorities’s course.

“Is it appropriate what the Minister [of Transport, Simeon Brown] mentioned that if we show there’s a security threat we don’t have to modify them,” Hills requested.

AT’s Public Transport and Lively Modes director Stacey van der Putten mentioned she believed there have been some decision-making powers for the council in sure circumstances underneath the brand new guidelines.

“The workforce continues to be very a lot working by means of what these new guidelines imply,” van der Putten mentioned.

Hills responded that the council shouldn’t reverse any speeds if there’s proof of hurt.

“That’s on us and on the AT board, these deaths and critical accidents that may come.

“There might be extra folks useless and harm if we reverse all of them primarily based on our proof,”

Hills mentioned.

Chair of the Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee, councillor Andy Baker, lower off any additional dialogue.

“We’ll get the chance to speak about pace guidelines when that comes.

“I don’t assume it’s honest to lump that on to the workers at present,” Baker mentioned.