Looks like Steven Joyce and Gerry Brownlee may have a long-lost cousin who became mayor of Toronto (click for the video):
And the accompanying article:
Rob Ford has dismissed a report that suggests a reduction in speed limits to protect pedestrians and cyclist in Toronto as “nuts.”
Asked if the city will drop speed limits, as suggested earlier this week by the city’s chief medical officer of health Ford told reporters on Friday the idea is “nuts, nuts, nuts, nuts. No.”
The report — Road to Health: Improving Walking and Cycling in Toronto — released by Dr. David McKeown recommends speed limits be reduced by as much as 20 km/h, saying the slower speed limits will protect pedestrians and cyclists.
If accepted the speed limit on Lakeshore Boulevard might be reduced to 40 km/h. On most residential streets traffic would be reduced to about 30 km/h.
Ford, who has many times referred to what he calls the ‘war on the car’ in Toronto, said the proposal is “absolutely ridiculous.”
The mayor was also asked about a vote this week by Metrolinx, the provincial transportation agency, which gave the green light to four light rail projects on Toronto’s streets.
Ford, whose vision of subways was soundly defeated by city council, said he’s not giving up.
“I’m not going to stop fighting for subways. That’s what the people want. That’s what we’ll continue to do.”
The mayor also said a proposal for road tolls to pay for public transportation projects being floated by some on city councillor is not going to survive.
“I’m totally, 100 per cent opposed to toll roads. If they want to float it — I’m going to sink it.”
The mayor also dismissed a new group that has emerged from within city council which describes itself as a centrist group.
Ford said contemptuously that there’s “no middle” at city hall. City councillors, he said, are on “One (side) or the other.”
But Ford said although they may make proposals for the city agenda, he remains in charge.
“I encourage them to meet and come and talk to me – and as you guys know I’m meeting with the councillors, as many as I can — and getting their input and telling [them] the direction I want to take the city.”
Ford made the comments during a news conference to show off a new iPhone app which will allow residents to easily report vandalism, graffiti and potholes.
About time we dropped the speed limit on all non-arterial roads in Auckland to 30 or 40 kph I think.
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I think I read that the reason he supports subways over PT on the streets is so that it doesn’t get in the way of cars. Still that’s more support than we get here from the government although perhaps he is taking the approach of making it so expensive that it will piss off voters who will kill it.
Yeah pretty much. Quite a lot of back story around Rob Ford and Toronto’s transit plans – try here for more information:
http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2012/04/25/torontos-transit-city-back-in-play/
He basically cancelled a massive transit expansion scheme which was funded, to replace it with a fairly small subway project that had little hope of getting funding.
Agreed there Matt 😀
Peter please expand on: [About time we dropped the speed limit on all non-arterial roads in Auckland to 30 or 40 kph I think]. Travelling 30km/h down Porchester Road is one way to make my patience disappear very fast.
If anything, arterial roads should be at 60km/h with residential and commercial ‘through’ roads at 50km/h (schools already have or will have 40km/h zones, dead end streets at 30km/h and shared zones between 10-20km/h. Any thing impeeds efficiency of the traffic and creates more hazards than safety benefits…
While we needs to think of our pedestrians and kids in streets, the same group(s) need to take responsibility as well. You go jay walk which illegal then prepared to be run over…
Porchester Road is an arterial road so would be exempt from what I am talking about.
Pretty keen for general 50 kph for arterials unless there’s a compelling reason for something different. Manukau City Council were mental and had all sorts of different speed limits. Isn’t Great South Road still 70 kph through Manukau City Central?
Edit: Also, completely disagree with you saying that jay-walkers deserve to be run over. What a bloody stupid thing to say.
No its not – commit sn illegal act which has both grave consequences to both the idiot committing the illegal act of jay walking and the driver who doing what they are legally allowed to do and that is drive down the road to either the speed limit set or conditions that might prompt a slower speed.
Put it this way, I am doing my legal speed limit of 50km/h down a road as the conditions allow it and someone jay walks right in front of me instead of using a legal crossing or that said crossing legally (the little green man or the car has safely come to a stop at a pedestrian crossing). Now I have two things I can do, hit the slammers and hope like hell I miss the jay walker, or I could take evasive action to miss the illegal jay-walker but instead I hit an innocent bystander who is of no-fault on their own and either injure or kill them.
So my comment stands – commit the illegal act and be prepared to pay a price and that includes no sympathy or mercy if collected by a car who travelled within the conditions and legal boundaries set to it.
So Peter, punish rather than pander to the person committing the illegal act, not the innocent people using the road and pathways. Illegal is illegal full stop so why should I give sympathy there
Back on the actual topic as I do not want to hi-jack the thread over jay walkers, Porchester Road is an arterial – so I take it anything road on a map book that is yellow is an arterial? Manukau City had one thing right and no the 70km/h bit in the City Centre section, it was the 60km/h bit on primary thoroughfares such as the Great South Road and East Tamaki Road. Efficiency is needed on those primary thoroughfares and 60km/h is still considered safe for again roads like the GSR and East Tamaki. I was just thinking though – pedestrian refuge islands on those 60km/h roads that do not have wide grass median strips like East Tamaki Road?
There is no ‘jaywalking’ law in NZ. It is illegal to not use a pedestrian crossing when you are within 20m (?) of said crossing but there is nothing to stop a pedestrian crossing a road anywhere else.
I’ll rephrase and provide a clarifcation.
By jay walking I do mean the act of not using a pedestrian crossing when you are within 20m (?) which includes Traffic Light Controlled intersections as well. I have no problem with pedestrians crossing a road so long as they do not endanger themselves by doing something dumb (same goes to the car). What I do have a problem is people crossing within the 20m of a actual crossing – usually at trafic light controlled intersections illegally and that includes the little Red Man is lit up in Solid Red mode. That is what I was implying in my responses with jay walking to in this thread.
Thanks Bryce 🙂 – did not mean to mis-represent there
If you’re driving properly you should have a decent chance at being able to avoid someone who jumps out surprisingly.
The time difference of driving at 50 kph (or more likely, 59 kph) instead of 60 kph (or more likely, 69 kph) is fairly minimal. The different if you get hit as a pedestrian is life or death. So it does matter.
The operative word being “should”
Your last sentence I agree with there and yes it does matter, but remember roads like East Tamaki, the Great South Road (in certain areas)and Pakarunga Highway are primary Thoroughfares to large amounts of through traffic – hence why a trade off is needed at 60km/h (which QLD does for its main roads) provided you have things like, cycle lanes, refuge islands/bays and controlled crossings at regular distances for our pedestrians. So a trying to get a compromise here with our main roads.
Both motor and foot traffic need to take equal amount of care and responsibility when using a road. Our engineers need to make sure our roads are built properly so that both forms of traffic can use the road safely.
As for the quote down below, yeah some interesting quotes there…
Ben that IS incredibly pig-headed. People jay walk because it takes an excessively long time to cross the street which is a public space remember. It is all about evaluation of risk, there is a low risk of being hit but the gains in terms of waiting time is worthwhile. Just sometimes, people do get hit.
Connecting this to the original post…
The best solution, as the Chief of Health in Toronto suggests, is to reduce traffic speeds. It really is that simple. This would also allow bicycles (along with pedestrians) to integrate with traffic easier; removing the need for cycling lands on the left hand side which are useless if you are turning right anyway. It makes incredible sense because it doesn’t mean you CAN’T take your car if you absolutely have to, but it makes it as an option for your weekly commute far less desirable.
Are you condoning a hazardous and illegal piece of behaviour? You might want to take a look at the lower CBD streets, the pedestrian wait times are quite reasonable for Customs Street and lower Queen Street considering the mix of traffic in the area, people are as you call me pig headed when they can not wait patiently 60 seconds to 2 minutes to cross the road safely in a very VERY busy area of the city. Our roading engineering has a lot to be desired with say traffic light phasing and street design but that is not a reason to condone illegal behaviour as you are doing!
Yes people do get hit sometimes from a freak accident which is of no fault to the driver and pedestrian – but getting whacked because you committed an illegal act by jay walking which is unsafe no matter what (unless the road is dead empty) is unacceptable to the part of the jay-walker. There is a reason why you get fined in overseas for jay-walking and it is not just revenue collection – it is because it is an illegal behaviour to which I have no sympathy for period.
For heaven sake you lot stop pandering to a clearly illegal behaviour then make it the fault of the car who is innocent in this affair (providing he was driving to the conditions at the time which includes travelling through an intersection as right-of-way at the speed set by that little circle sign with a red border and a number in it. If you have a problem with jay walking because of road engineering then take it up with Auckland Transport and NZTA.
Back to the post itself:
I see some here are missing the point on why the main roads should be set at 60km/h with cycle lanes and refuge islands. There are more than just people who commute to and from work or where public transport is not an option. What about freight traffic both heavy trucks and the delivery truck delivering supplies to a bakery for example, what about people who use cars to get to and from remote work sites like contractors, what about me who finishes work outside Public Transport hours so I have to take my car to get home (which means I drive to work in peak afternoon traffic)- we all use those main roads and need efficiency in travelling on them.
Dropping the speed down is not going to help the economy much at all. Now as I said, dead end streets and places like Lower Queen Street should be 40km/h and other roads at 50km/h, but your primary Thoroughfares outside of the motorway need to be held at 60km/h – they are part of the arterial network to keep traffic moving as there is just more than you 9-5 commuter.
I shake my head sometimes I really do and what can get touted. A balance is needed, not swing the damn pendulum from one extreme to the other and double bugger the economy…
If it seems I have drawn the cannons tonight – probably because I have due to the nature of this thread and thinking. Normally topics here wont get me going like this but this one does – apologies and apologies in advance if I upset or have offended any-one with my rather blunt opinions in this thread. I hold nothing against anyone here, just a super emotive issue thats all 🙂
So you’re suggesting it’s OK to put lives at risk so that some bakery can get its bread to a shop 43 seconds quicker due to the road’s speed limit being 60 kph and not 50 kph?
I really can’t see how that helps the economy.
Sorry have to ask but are you playing the Daft or Ignorant Card tonight with 60km/h main thoroughfares?
No one’s life is being put at risk moving the speed limit from 50km/h to 60km/h on those primary roads. Stop wrapping up pedestrians in cotton wool and focus on the matter at hand – the economy and our road engineering.
Heavens sake if I can walk down State Highway Two at Maramarua and cross the that piece of death trap walking and not get killed then I am sure a pedestrian can cross one half of a primary thoroughfare, get to the grass medium strip or refuge island, wait, then cross the second half and go on their merry-way.
I am also quite sure your beloved bus wont mind doing 60m/h too especially if he travelling express down that main thoroughfare either.
So what you say – have your cake and eat it too?
But you’re not saying that the odd arterial road should be 60 kph, you’re suggesting that should be the general rule. That means Dominion Road, Broadway, Parnell Road, Mt Eden Road as well as your super-mega-highways out south. Such a change would kill people, no doubt about it. There’s a reason why the speed limit of Ponsonby Road got reduced to 40 kph. People were dying.
As I said earlier, 10 kph can make the world of difference to whether someone lives or dies.
Ok now we are getting some traction in the debate Peter 😀
After my last comment I was thinking of selected roads which could support 60km/h:
They are: Great South Road from Puhinui Road to Browns Road, then again from Mahia Road to Papakura Town Centre, then from the south edge of Papakura Town Centre to State Highway One/Drury Interchange.
All of East Tamaki Road and Cavendish Drive (which are 60km/h any way)
Pakuranga Highway
Mt Wellington Highway
Great South Road from Portage Road to Main Highway
Great North Road all the way except through town centres
Probably a few more but those are the main ones I am thinking of
Queensland has a nice rule
Unless sign posted, all built up areas (defined by street lighting) are 50km/h. Had some nice 60km/h roads such as Nicklin Way, Sunshine Coast Aussie, could bring it here?
Btw Ponsonby Road reduced to 40km/h, yeah well. Supportive of that measure there as a unique example.
And since when do I have super mega highways in South Auckland 😉 😛 😀 – wish I did some days 😛
I still disagree that raising any speed limits to 60 kph would create benefits that outweigh the costs. Let’s think about it for a second.
The benefits, at least theoretically, are a relatively small saving in time. Remember we’re talking about local roads with intersections and traffic lights and all, so perhaps you’re lucky to be going “at” the speed limit 60-70% of the time (and only off-peak as congestion would mean that it’s a pointless debate at peak times). Let’s say you can be at the speed limit for 6.5 km out of a 10 km trip, then raising the limit from 50 kph to 60 kph would mean the trip takes you 6 minutes instead 7 minutes and 48 seconds. So you save 1 minute 48 seconds.
On the negative side, a 60 kph street is more likely to discourage urban intensification, it’s likely to put off pedestrians, cyclists because it creates a more hostile environment. If you get hit by a car doing 60 kph chances are you’re dead, at 50 kph you have a chance.
I just don’t see the positive outweighing the negatives.
For a courier driver or delivery driver travelling on the offpeak that 1:48 saving per run adds up…
Also
Pakuranga Highway has decent stretches in it between traffic lights so sustaining 60km/h is do-able, same with East Tamaki Road and sections of the GSR.
You mention intensification, that is another issue entirely – and one I would point our favourite Councillor Quax over just to stir the nest because I can 😛
Intensification is not blanket and will never be blanket, plus those areas I mentioned above are not due for any intensification any time soon on the residential front. They might do commercial or industrial wise but can’t see Residential down those quarters any time soon (apart from what limited there is especially in East Tamaki so 60km/h can be placed and remained for some years yet.
As I also said Road Engineering can help create a so called 60km/h hostile road to a more safe 60km/h road.
BTW these are not local roads in the strictist sense, they are Arterials and Thoroughfares – different in my books to how I treat them and usually to how planners and engineers treat them also.
Any case – shift is over and time to return to Papakura.
Will be back tomorrow Peter – but it is safe to say we might have to agree to disagree and shake hands on this one 🙂
Ben you are basing your hard-hearted opinions on a falsehood. Outside of motorways roads and streets do not, in fact, belong to motorists. They are public space are open for the use of all. We have no Jay-walking law here, that is an American insanity. I know this is a popular misconception and you can more easily behave like the bullying road hog you obviously believe you are entitled to when safely in your car, but that does not give you any legal or moral right to assault and kill your fellow citizens.
I strongly urge you to re-read your views and think again. Are there any other areas of life that you feel you can give yourself the right to punish others so extremely? Even if they are foolish or unsafe in their use of our public space does anyone really deserve what you are proposing? And why, because you or another vehicle user may be slightly held up, a little inconvenienced?
Have to agree that some of Ben’s claims are odd or contradictory. First he? complains about jaywalkers. Then he acknowledges it’s only illegal to cross if within 20 metres of a crossing. At the same time he’s saying making certain roads 60 km/h would result in significant time savings. When queried on this point because of the lack of time savings in many roads due to traffic lights etc, he says he’s primarily talking about roads with long streches without traffic lights.
There may be some additional pedestrian crossings, but it seems obvious that in most of these roads, by his own admission, there is little jaywalking or illegal behaviour because it’s quite legal to cross on these roads for these long streches where he sees the time savings as coming from. Of course pedestrians should still take care, but even if we follow his extreme view of jaywalkers deserving to get run over, it’s clearly doesn’t apply to the places where he wants his 60 km/h speed limits.
Realised I didn’t mention that I’m not actually opposing Ben’s suggestion of increased limits in these streches since I don’t know enough to comment. I just think his case for why any possible increase risk to pedestrians is okay, seems rather flawed.
Ben, you are a cynical person – NO ONE deserves to die for making a mistake, even a careless person. And if you walked a bit more around our cities, you’d find out how hard and inconvenient it is to walk because the city has been designed excessively for cars. If one crossed only at pedestrian crossings (which, as others have pointed out, is not a legal requirement anyway), then it would get another level of inconvenient.
The best example is that cars get green lights automatically at signals in NZ. A pedestrian has to push a button to apply. In many overseas countries, pedestrian signals cycle automatically. Here even at their officially designed “you will be safe if you walk all the way here and cross like an orderly little subject” locations, even there pedestrians are second-class.
What a car-centric, status-quo ignoring-the-bull-in-the-chinashop response you gave.
He’s not a missing Brownlee-Joyce.
It’s Meatloaf from Fight Club. “His name was Robert Paulsen, his name was Robert Paulsen”!
Here’s another interesting article about Rob Ford: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17914504
“Cyclists accuse Toronto mayor Ford of ‘war on bikes'”
Wow some great quotes in there:
40, 60, 80 or 100km/h depending on the type of road. Easy. There are too many differing road speeds at present.
40km/h for residential streets which brings it in line with the school limits. 60 for arterials and 80 – 100 for highways.
Spot on Bryce – Spot on 😀
He certainly gives Gerry a good run at “who ate all the pies?”
I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to our 2 recent transport ministers.
Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?
Re jaywalking:
As a recent visitor from Oz I comment: Central Auckland is pretty unfriendly to pedestrians. 5 seconds of green man in a 120 second traffic light cycle is not good enough for a pedestrian dense central business district. Of course in those conditions people will jaywalk when they can.
In Melbourne CBD similar intersections would have 20 seconds of green man in a two part 90 second cycle.
“This will be a big election issue”
“The majority of the people have clearly stated that they want subways. Subways, subways, subways”
“People want to get from point A to point B as quick as possible”
“Listen to your constituents”
“Lets do what’ll put us on the map as a world class city, and that’s building subways”
“The street cars aren’t going to cut it, the people want subways”.
$6.5 billion for the Eglinton-Scarborough Crosstown LRT.
$1.9 billion split between the LRT on Finch Ave. W. and Sheppard East.
He makes the arguement that the LRT is only slightly faster than the existing buses. The only real question is whether we will start building those subways now, or wait another 20 years and build them at 10 times the cost. Inevitably, though, we will have subways.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/23/rob-ford-ramps-up-his-pro-subway-campaign-we-should-start-building-now/
Certainly a lot of anti Rob Ford, pro LRT media.
I reckon North of Albany to J. tunnel & South of Drury to Bombay motorways should be 120.
On the other hand traffic on Hobson, Nielsen & Quay street moves too quickly.
….bigger the mess
Some people here are making the dangerous argument that arterial roads should be 60km/h in Auckland. That is TOTALLY crazy. An increase of another 10 km/h increases the chances of death for pedestrians and cyclists by almost double, in the impact speeds we are talking about. At 60 km/h, we start needing access controls (no driveways), we start needing to put crash barriers and pedestrian fences everywhere, we would basically be creating new barriers all over the city. Way to go on a war footing!
Also, the people calling for 60 km/h on arterials don’t seem to know how MANY arterials we have in Auckland. Just in the inner city, we have Great North Road, New North Road, Broadway / Manukau Road, Khyber Pass Road, Symonds Street, Quay Street, Fanshaw Street, Victoria Street, Mount Eden Road etc…. I could go on. Calling for them to be sped up is tantamount to building little mini-motorways like IanMcKinnon Drive.
By ‘arterial’ I mean roads that are currently 60 or 70 km/h like Pakuranga Hwy and along Highbrook as examples. I would also have mandatory infrastructure to accompany these kind of limits – off road or separated cycleways with best practice engineering to satisfy the safety and convenience of pedestrians. If there is no space to acheive this then 40km/h it is. More to come ……
Good timing this thread. Over the past couple of weeks I have been making, with the assistance of my trusty TomTom, observations of vehicle speeds in relation to posted speed limits. What I have noticed is that, generally, people drive at around 6 -7 km/h over the posted limit regardless of the limit. That is why I would absolutely support a blanket speed change to any road, that currently has a 50 km/h limit, being dropped to 40 tomorrow. 70 km/h (effectively 76 or so) is too fast for 90% of the roads posted as such and these should be 60 km/h.
You raise a good point in relation to the actual effectiveness of speed limit. I would bet if enforcement was really harsh (say vehicle is impounded for a mouth for any speeding (yes even 1kph) then typical driving speeds would drop about 10kmph overnight. (Not that I think this would be a good idea)
I would like to see a system where a posted speed limit was not required, with speed judgements being instead made subjectively. Its kinda nuts that say the eastern end of quay st (multiple wide lanes, median, turning lanes etc) has same speed limit as my dead end suburban street. Of course I cannot envisage a way to implement this. Minor reckless driving tickets would replace speed tickets, but enforcement would be much harder.
Thanks Scott but, regarding Quay St, I actually think it has been built with the expressed purpose of moving cars at ‘peak times’. Unfortunately this has resulted in a urban street looking like a highway, which it isn’t. These kind of roads divide places. Pakuranga Road and the Ellerslie / Panmure Hwy are another couple of examples where this has happened. As vehicles are doing 56 km/h along these roads, pedestrians, cyclists and residents get a very raw deal – all because of ‘peak’ traffic flows.
And to put some science behind what I just said: Look at page 3-8 (Page 10 in the PDF) of this NZTA design guide. It gives the likelihood of death on impact.
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/pedestrian-planning-guide/docs/chapter-3.pdf
So assuming that a 40 km/h driver can break enough to reduce the impact speed to 20 km/h when he hits a pedestrian he didn’t see crossing Ponsonby Road, then that poor guy STILL has a 5% chance of dying.
At 50 km/h, braking down to 30 km/h on impact, that pedestrian’s chance of dying has already around tripled, to over 15%.
For those people who want 60 km/h arterials, at impact speed 40 km/h that pedestrian is dead over 30% of the time. Twice the fatality chance of 50 km/h, six times that of 40km/h. So unless you also support putting up fencing along the footpaths of all our arterial roads, turning them all into nice pedestrian cages, then supporting this is supporting extra deaths in great numbers.
Hiya Max. Here is a link for anyone interested.
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/nz-pedestrian-profile/docs/nz-pedestrian-profile.pdf
Of note is this paragraph:
“Creating walkable road environments is cost effective in comparison to other
transport modes. For less than the cost of building a single kilometre of motorway,
it is possible to achieve a safe, direct and pleasant road environment for
pedestrians within an existing urban community of 50,000 people*, as well as
undertake the education, enforcement and promotion programmes required to
further enhance safety and maximise its use.”
Well by judging the negative comments I got it seems my suspicions were only confirmed…
You accuse me of being one extreme yet what you advocate is the other extreme which will simply not work without buggering both the city and economy on the way out.
Go read what I said with 60km/h arterials on the few roads I did name and look where their locations are. Those roads do have cycle lanes already in place and either a either a median grass strip or refuge islands (but not enough). Those roads can support 60km/h without any increase of risk to pedestrians when everyone behaves legally and sensibly. Others would need to be researched case by case but I say we start with the roads I named first.
Max stop being a melodramatic with a 60km/h speed down a road that has light industrial or “light commercial” like down Takanini way, stop wrapping pedestrians in cotton wool which seems what people are doing in here. Alter our engineering and get those refuge islands in, some crossings or grass median strips (our roads needs upgrades anyway) and we have a BALANCED approach to both our pedestrian and car on a PRIMARY thoroughfare (which are not all arterials btw as some could never support 60).
You might also just find that 471 Bus that can get to 60km/h in those industrial pieces of the GSR (Takanini, Penrose) might be a win with bus passengers if 1:48 was shaved off their trip.
Car-centric – no, balancing the approach – yes, swinging the pendulum from one side to the other – that is what you are doing.
Hmmmmm
Ben, we’ve had six decades of incredibly one sided transport policy and investment that has focussed almost entirely on increasing private vehicle throughput and speeds, primarily by marginalising any other mode including things like making pedestrians walk hundreds of metres to a refuge or wait ages for a ped signal just to get to the other side of the street.
Swinging the pendulum well over is the only way to balance up the last 60 years of having it firmly stuck as far as it will go one way.
So? I disagree with half the roads you mentioned for 60 km/h on detail and the rest on principle. You are proposing spending time and money on increasing the speed of roads for cars. You are proposing to perpetuate a polciy which optimises cars. We had that for decades, and now you want some more? And you are surprised that pro-walking, pro-cycling, pro-public transport people are opposed to that?
On a less generic level, designing roads for higher speeds does not, by any direct link, increase capacity, and in any case, capacity increases would not necessarily benefit PT, as they would create induced demand for car traffic. The main problem of our public transport system is that it is stuck in the same general traffic jams that car drivers are, but without the flexibility of a car. So your argument that faster roads would shave off time off public transport and thus make it more attractive is missing the point.
Regarding your list of roads that could be sped up (presumably because there’s not many pedestrians in these industrial areas / because “they already have cycle lanes”), I also disagree. If one speeds up low-pedestrian / low-cyclists volume areas, you discourage even the possibility of increasing pedestrian and cyclist use, as well as short-distance walking and cycling commutes to these industrial / commercial areas. You even discourage people walking down to the corner dairy on their lunch break. That is, and will ever remain the downside of “mode-separated” designs necessary on higher-speed roads. I am not saying there aren’t places where such designs has no place (or I would have to argue we should abolish motorways, which I don’t). I simply feel that any policy which concentrates on doing that is concentrating on the wrong priorities for Auckland. Raising speeds to 60 km/h requires significant works, which are costly and detrimental to the community, and has some very limited off-peak-only benefits to a group (car drivers and road freight) which has already been “wrapped in [policy] cotton wool” for decades, to use your words.
I would think that decreasing the speed limit for non-arterial roads would be prohibitively expensive as the change in speed limit would need to be signposted at so many locations. Now we only really have to put signs up at the start of motorways and other exceptions like the end of Dom Road. Imagine putting a sign at the intersection where every local road meets an arterial. You could argue that you don’t need the sign posts but then how to people determine whether the road they are on is an arterial or not?
They did it on Ponsonby Rd.
You’re talking about 2km of road. Scale that up to several hundred and the expense will increase dramatically.
The inverse is TRUE. If it is not sign posted as 60, 80 or 100 km/ h then you are doing 40. Easy :-).
You will still need a 60km/hr sign at each intersection with the arterial though.
Here’ the options: http://bikefriendlyoc.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/dallasdilemma.jpg
Hmm, I think in comparison to building a CBD rail link; replacing a few signs will not be too great a strain on the final budget. In fact, it could be the low hanging fruit that the council should reach for…
Why do people always blame speed? its not the speed its the driver!! improve driver education and we will have no need for speed limits.
We had better make the trains run slower too, a lot of pedestrians are being hit by them.
Speed limits in New Zealand are a joke!
Ponsonby Road is 40 on the main straight wide road, yet you can turn off to the narrow side streets with houses and kids playing and you allowed to speed up to 50!
Speed is not the problem its just an easy excuses for bad drivers!!
For all drivers, from the best to the atrocious, an increase in speed increases the risk of them crashing and hurting others. You can’t say speed is not a factor.
The catalyst for the change in speed limit on Ponsonby Rd was the killing of a young mother crossing the street. The road certainly feels safer now, so hopefully it will prevent other accidents like this. Being straight and wide was part of the problem; motorists used to feel comfortable going 50 or 60 whereas in most the side streets their narrowness keeps the speed down (Richmond Rd and Franklin Rd excluded).
BTW, remember a speed limit is a LIMIT – it’s not a statement that you are entitled to drive at that speed in all circumstances. You still have to adjust your speed to the conditions in front of you.
In activity centres one of the relevant conditions may be, high density of pedestrian movement. Responsible driving means considering the likelihood that a pedestrian will behave erratically. If I’m driving at 60kph on an older arterial road, I would always slow down when passing through a busy strip shopping centre.
Note that the road rules** do NOT contain any general principle that a pedestrian must give way to a motorist except at a marked crossing. Aside from the prohibition on crossing within 20m of a marked crossing, it would appears that pedestrians have just as much right to cross a road at any time as motorists have the right to drive along it.
In practice of course pedestrians almost always give way, because they value their lives. But it doesn’t mean a person in a car has more rights than a person on foot. The traffic system should be managed to minimise delay to everyone, and in busy areas that may mean more shared zones.
The Australian road rules do have a general principle that a pedestrian must not cross in a way that ‘creates a traffic hazard’. This does not seem to have any correlate in the NZ road rules.** ‘Creating a traffic hazard’ is not further defined. It should not be assumed that ‘creating a traffic hazard’ means ‘anything that causes delay to a motorist’. I would argue that crossing with adequate distance and visibility so that an approaching motorist can slow down safely does not create a traffic hazard.
** I’m not totally familiar with NZ road rules but I assume the key document is this one: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2004/0427/latest/DLM302188.html
The do gooders are out in force here. Its is so dangerous and pedestrians are so dumb that the man walking in front with a red flag will inevitably be brought back. The man with the flag will need to escorted by three bumper collision vehicles with flashing lights ( as per mowing the verges ) . The sequence can be repeated until everyone is happy. At least in Alfriston the kids must be really smart as you can drive at 80kph past there school. Around our way they are so dumb that the limit is 40kph. I dont know who tested them. Probably the same bloke that makes a buck out of promoting safety nonsense. … Drivers check your loads. (at least ten times during a short journey and dont go faster than 30kph if you have traffic behind you..