Calls grow to ban vehicles on Te Mata Peak at night

Metal and wood safety barriers were installed on the outside of corners on the notorious road leading up to Te Mata Peak, Havelock North, last December. Photo/File

Hastings District Council is considering closing the road to Te Mata Peak overnight in a further bid to curb accidents on the notorious route to the park's summit.

Council staff have recommended the upper section of Te Mata Peak Rd be closed to traffic every night from 10pm to 5am as part of a range of measures being put in place to improve safety along the route to the popular peak.

The suggestion will be considered at a meeting of the council's works and services committee today.

Council staff have also asked the committee to support a proposal to extend safety barriers further down the road following the installation of barriers at the top of the route late last year.

In January last year a teenage driver died when his vehicle failed to take a sharp bend while travelling down the road about 11pm. A coroner found it was likely he would have survived if barriers had been installed following the death of an elderly male driver in 2010, after which another inquiry had recommended safety barriers be erected.

A report prepared for today's committee meeting said council staff believed the overnight vehicle ban was necessary to fully achieve safety measures outlined in a crash reduction study carried out last year.

Only the minimum length of guard rail recommended by the coroner had so far been installed and straight sections of the upper peak road remained unprotected.

But the two safety proposals being recommended to the committee have been met with a mixed response from the Te Mata Park Trust Board, which is opposed to extending the railing.

In a letter to the council last month the trust said it supported restricted vehicle access at night but "strongly opposed" further barriers on the upper reaches of the road to the summit.

It was concerned the barriers would prevent pedestrians and cyclists from moving out of the way of vehicles and that they would also trap sheep on the road.

Trust chairman Bruno Chambers said yesterday that with an analysis showing 60 per cent of accidents on the road happened during the hours of darkness, but with only seven per cent of traffic using the road between 7pm and 7am "there's quite a strong argument for closing the road" at night.

Mr Chambers said the trust was happy with the council's moves to date to improve safety on the road but it believed the proposed barrier extension was "overkill" and it would instead be better to install barriers at two high-accident corners below Peak House restaurant, at the lower end of the road.

The council recently voted to cut speed limits on the road. The previous limit up to the Te Mata Park car park was halved from 100km/h to 50km/h. A section from the carpark to halfway to the summit was cut from 50km/h to 40km/h and the final climb to the summit was dropped from 50km/h to 20km/h.