The Slowdown: Fixing roads v lowering speeds - the great debate

Opponents of proposed speed limit reductions say Waka Kotahi needs to focus on fixing roading issues rather than slowing motorists down to make the roads safer.

However, roading experts say it’s not that simple and reducing speed limits is a quick and low-cost way of immediately improving road safety.

In this final part of The Slowdown, a series exploring the impacts of Waka Kotahi’s proposed speed limit changes, the Herald examines the arguments for and against fixing our roads, rather than lowering the speed limit.

“In my opinion, it’s not a matter of either/or,” said John de Pont, director of engineering at Ternz, an independent research organisation that specialises in transport-related issues.

De Pont, who has been a transport researcher for 35 years, says Waka Kotahi has a finite budget because it is funded by road user charges and fuel excise duty.

If upgrading the road network was to increase in pace, road users would in turn need to accept a substantial increase in road user charges and fuel tax or other specific Government funding.

“Thus, improving road quality is happening, but is necessarily relatively slow.”

New Zealand’s road deaths are disproportionately high, with a death rate in 2018 of 7.7 per 100,000 people.

To address this, the Government launched the Road to Zero strategy in 2019 with an initial target of 40 per cent fewer deaths and serious injuries by 2030 and eventually no deaths or serious injuries on the road at all. Reducing speed limits is considered crucial to achieving these goals.

However, documents received by RNZ under the Official Information Act showed that in November 2021, officials advised ministers this initial 40 per cent target was unrealistic.

Waka Kotahi updated its forecasts on what could be achieved and proposed a new “realistic” target of 33 per cent, RNZ reported.

Waka Kotahi estimated that more than 85 per cent of speed limits in New Zealand are above their technical definition of “safe and appropriate”, a threshold that is based on different criteria and factors, such as the design of the road, crash survivability and community wellbeing.

Currently, Waka Kotahi’s Interim State Highway Speed Management Plan 2023-2024 includes speed limit changes to 97 state highway corridors, which account for 350km of the 11,000km of state highway network. The interim plan also includes proposed changes to several hundred schools and marae.

De Pont said matching the speed limit to the current condition of the road could be done immediately at a relatively low-cost and the limit could be increased over time as sections of the road were upgraded.

“Upgrading the road quality is happening but it is costly and therefore takes considerable time. Reducing speed limits on high-risk sections has been proven to be effective in reducing the road toll.”

A roading researcher says reducing speed limits is a faster, cheaper way to address road safety. Photo / Waka Kotahi

AA’s road safety spokesperson Dylan Thomsen said they supported most of the proposed changes, but more needed to be done to upgrade and improve key highway routes to make them safer and allow for higher speeds.

“There is a huge number of things that can be done in terms of engineering that all help to make a road a bit safer to travel on. The most significant level of those upgrades are … median barriers in particular,” Thomsen said.

“We don’t want to end up with it just being Auckland to Hamilton and around Wellington and Christchurch that are the only places that have roads above 80km per hour.”

Transporting NZ chief executive Nick Leggett said road quality was a problem and reducing speed limits that slowed down drivers further could affect the industry and economy.

National’s transport spokesperson Simeon Brown said he supported reduced speed limits around schools, but not “blanket” reductions across the state highway network.

“What we have is a Government that is focused on low-hanging fruit, which is reducing speed limits rather than building better roads,” Brown said.

Police say speed, alcohol, drugs, and distraction are the main causes of crashes resulting in deaths and serious injuries. But, regardless of the main cause of a serious crash, speed is always a factor to some degree.

New Zealand has traditionally had two main speed limits: 50km for urban areas and 100km for the open road.

Senior transportation engineer Glen Koorey said the traditional 100km and 50km speed limits did not reflect the different types of New Zealand roads and he supported reviewing and reducing the speed limit.

Dr Glen Koorey, director and senior transportation engineer at ViaStrada.

Koorey is also the director of transport planning company ViaStrada, which is contracted to review roads and recommend speed limit changes or infrastructure improvements. The last time ViaStrada was engaged to review a speed limit was in August 2021 when it reviewed SH6 South Westland.

“Historically, we had a two-speed model. Once in a blue moon you might have a 70km,” Koorey said.

“It’s silly to say [all roads] are safe at 100km or 50km, they’re not. They will kill people.”

The latest legislation for setting speed limits, the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2022, which came into effect in May, was more nuanced and wide-ranging than previous legislation, Koorey said.

“[It reflects] that not all roads are equal, not even rural road looks that same, not every urban street looks the same.”

Koorey said in some cases lowering the speed limit had to make up for poor road design because there was not enough money to fix every road in New Zealand or to build safety infrastructure like median barriers.

Waka Kotahi Road to Zero portfolio manager Tara Macmillan said infrastructure improvements took longer and were costlier, while speed interventions were generally quicker, but the agency was not just focused on speed.

She said the upcoming 2022/23 summer season of road renewals would be the biggest in New Zealand’s history, which includes 2450km of lane renewals, such as resurfacing or rebuilding roads.

Macmillan said $617 million would be spent this season on state highway maintenance and $1.5 billion on local roads.