The Save Our Safe Streets campaign, including Bike Auckland, Living Streets Aotearoa, Walk Auckland, Brake, the road safety charity and All Aboard have written to the Mayor Wayne Brown. You can read our letter below, detailing why Aucklanders need Mayor Brown to urgently halt Auckland Transport’s wasteful, unnecessary and dangerous change to widespread higher speeds. The results currently appearing on our streets are alarming (photos below).
Since early March, we have been reviewing and questioning AT’s approach to the Speed Rule, given that other cities have found a more pragmatic and reasonable approach to ensure the best outcome for their residents. We have provided options and examples for how AT can keep safe speed zones where Aucklanders want them. We have yet to receive a satisfactory response to any of this work.
We therefore call on the Mayor to urgently intervene and call a halt on any further speed limit reversals to stop AT wasting time and money to make our streets less safe and less efficient. Equally, there should be no change to any speed limits until AT has undertaken safety assessments and completed any necessary infrastructure upgrades, in order to meet its statutory requirements.
To: Mayor Brown
Cc: Auckland Council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee members
Local Board Chairs
Auckland Council CEO Phil Wilson
Auckland Transport Board Chair Richard Leggat
Auckland Transport CEO Dean Kimpton
Subject: Urgent request for Mayoral intervention to halt AT’s wasteful, unnecessary and dangerous speed reversals
Tēnā koe Mayor Brown,
Aucklanders need you to urgently halt Auckland Transport’s wasteful, unnecessary and dangerous imposition of widespread higher speeds.
The current safe speed limits on quiet residential streets are functioning effectively and saving lives across Auckland, and were strongly supported during consultations. Yet AT has begun to roll back these areas to higher speeds on over 1500 streets without any notification to the public, nor any discussion with local boards. The results currently appearing on our streets are alarming, and include:
- Complicated signs that are unreadable at any speed. See below for examples. Drivers must slow to a crawl to make out the fine print. This is distracting and dangerous, especially where people should be looking out for children. (In some cases the times are inaccurate, exposing children to greater risk.)
- No apparent attempt to sort out incoherent and silly aberrations. These include the confusing mish-mash of speed limits AT intends to apply for Freeman’s Bay; and lifting speeds back to 50km/h in Ponsonby, including one tiny no-exit stub of Vermont St while the rest of Vermont St stays at 30km/h. Below: the mix of speed limits drivers will face in Freemans Bay if AT proceeds as planned – a slide from our presentation to the AT Board on 29 April.
Below: Vermont St has been ‘rescued’ and will stay 30 km/h – except for this short dead-end stub which is
set to return to 50km/h. Identical nearby streets will also revert to 50km/h despite residents’ concerns.
This growing mess stems from AT’s idiosyncratic and overly bureaucratic interpretation of the Speed Rule, an approach that is not shared by other councils. AT has made the choice to sweep up over 1,500 streets for reversal even though we know, from the interpretation applied by other councils, that these streets are not necessarily “specified roads” for the purposes of the Speed Rule. As Minister Bishop has confirmed to us (and to AT), only certain categories of roads have to be reversed by 1 July.
By proceeding as they currently are, AT’s leadership is acting contrary to their statutory responsibilities to maintain a safe transport network and to reduce risks. The CEO’s position that AT is “just following the law” doesn’t stack up when other councils whose consultations used identical language to AT, notably Dunedin and Hamilton, have found a path to keeping their safe speed areas. Additionally, AT is fully aware that Minister Bishop advised in April that Road Controlling Authorities like AT should look to follow Hamilton City Council’s approach, which has been accepted by NZTA.
Since early March, we have been reviewing and questioning AT’s approach to the Speed Rule, given that other cities have found a more pragmatic and reasonable approach to ensure the best outcome for their residents. We have provided options and examples for how AT can keep safe speed zones where Aucklanders want them. We have yet to receive a satisfactory response to any of this work.
In the process, we identified a number of areas that AT swept up by mistake, and errors continue to come to light. AT has since decided to quietly “save” streets in a few areas, but has not bothered to notify residents. Nor has AT satisfactorily explained why some streets are now “saved”, e.g. Vermont to Brown St in Ponsonby, while adjacent roads of identical character will face higher speeds regardless of residents’ wishes. You may have seen coverage of the dismay this is causing to residents of John St and other nearby streets; the example of Homai Station and the nearby school is also attracting comment.
We are deeply concerned that AT has not been transparent about the flaws in their process, and that they have not informed the public or council why some streets have now been saved at the last minute and not others. At this point, we have lost faith in AT’s leadership, which increasingly seems focused on covering its back rather than serving the best interests of Aucklanders. This situation is undermining the public’s confidence in AT and in Council’s influence over them, and damaging credibility all round.
This is all happening against the backdrop of your Mayoral proposal to bring transport policy, strategy and planning back “in house” by 1 October. You and your Council will be dealing with the fallout of this for months and maybe years to come, a costly distraction from far more important work. You may have initially regarded the reversals as an inevitable consequence of the change in government priorities. However, it is clear that Auckland is out on a limb, when other cities have found a way to do a tidy job. Far better to step in now than have to pick up the pieces through to Christmas and beyond.
Aucklanders need your leadership, to halt AT’s aberrant implementation of the Speed Rule. The speed reversals will reduce the safe and efficient functioning of the whole transport system. When it becomes less safe to cycle or walk for short trips, people will drive instead, adding to congestion. If speeds on the streets around train stations make it less safe to walk or cycle to stations, Auckland won’t get the full benefit of the investment in the CRL. And we all understand the cost, trauma and disruption caused by crashes across the network: why is AT increasing the likelihood of this happening?
It should go without saying that AT’s actions will lead to increased road trauma, given that Phase 1 and 2 of the Safe Speeds Programme (the vast majority of which are being reversed) forecast that the safer speeds would avoid 564 Deaths and Serious Injuries (DSI) over 10 years.
Throughout this process, AT is failing to confront a critical legal conflict between primary and secondary legislation. Raising speeds without any safety assessment conflicts with their purpose under the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 and the Land Transport Management Act 2003, which is to ‘contribute to a safe land transport system’.
We ask you to direct AT to pause the speed reversals while they seek clarification from the Minister of Transport on how this conflict should be resolved.
Mayor, our team has spent hundreds of pro bono hours attempting to fix the mess AT is making of this. All we have received is excuses. This is not good enough and requires your intervention.
This term, Council has directed AT to take more account of local board and community views. Now they have rushed to waste public funds on sweeping and unwanted speed reversals – missing key opportunities to brief you and councillors on the implications of what they were up to, and without seeking local board support for alternatives or public input on what communities want.
We fear that the AT Board is more concerned with reputation management than they are with responsibly dealing with the risk their actions pose to the people of Auckland. We would like you to tell them loud and clear where their duty lies.
We expect that AT will advise you that they have a cunning plan – that they can go ahead with sweeping reversals and then re-consult all over again on 40km/h speeds (under the Speed Rule, a very limited option for a few locations). This would be a waste of everyone’s time and energy: beside the palaver of re-consulting, analysing feedback, and then removing and re-installing signage, AT’s own data confirms 30 km/h as the safe operating speed for the majority of the current residential safe speed zones.
The prudent and most affordable approach, which also minimises disruption across our city, is to pause all reversals immediately, so AT can resolve the conflict between the relevant Acts and the Speed Rule while they seek Ministerial clarification.
We therefore call on you to urgently intervene and call a halt on any further speed limit reversals to stop AT wasting time and money to make our streets less safe and less efficient. Equally, there should be no change to any speed limits until AT has undertaken safety assessments and completed any necessary infrastructure upgrades, in order to meet its statutory requirements.
We ask you to take charge and talk sense into AT at this critical moment.
Ngā mihi,
Karen Hormann, Chair, Bike Auckland
Jenifer Silva, Chair, Walk Auckland
Marie Guerreiro, Executive Director, All Aboard
Caroline Perry, Director, Brake
Tim Jones, President, Living Streets Aotearoa
