Road authority has ‘little appetite’ to argue with West Coast communities
From local democracy reporter Brendon McMahon:
Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has "little appetite to buy arguments" with local communities over speed limits, the West Coast Regional Transport Committee has heard.
Several West Coast speed hot spots on the books for some time are still to be lowered, the committee heard this week.
These include the current 70kph zone outside Karoro School in Greymouth and the 70kph through Blacks Point near Reefton.
Karoro School has been calling for a review for several years, including lengthening the current 50kph speed zone which ends north of the school, near the Australasian Hotel, to replace the 70kph zone outside the school.
At Blacks Point, residents have been calling for a lower speed limit for decades including a recent plea to lower it to 30kph due to the blind spots, and people not slowing down on the winding section through the village.
Now the West Coast Regional Transport Committee, via the regional council, is required to co-ordinate input from road controlling agencies, including NZTA and district councils, for a regional speed management plan.
A report to the committee said the first full planning period for the new regional plan was likely to be the three years from July 2027.
It was not recommended the group prepare an interim regional speed management plan.
West Coast Regional Council strategy and communications manager Nichola Costley, said the first regional plan was not expected to be more than "a compilation process".
However, NZTA regional relationships director James Caygill said the agency would be consulting on an interim plan for the region before the 2024-27 period.
This could be as early as the end of this year or in early 2023.
It was expected to include all state highway 40kpm school speed zones on the West Coast.
"I would expect some school work and some minor tidy-ups," he said.
This included finishing off a review of the Blacks Point 70kph zone where residents had been "loud and clear".
Otherwise, no big surprises were expected in the interim plan, Caygill said.
Committee chairman Allan Birchfield said he thought the committee had already agreed to reduce the speed on State Highway 7 at Blacks Point, with a commitment to review the 100kph open road limit on the entire 59km of that road, from Reefton to Springs Junction.
Caygill said the agency had consulted and it was "interested in advancing speed reductions where they are acceptable for communities".
However, committee member Peter Haddock said the committee had made it clear in the past it did not want "widespread" speed reductions on long stretches of open road.
He gave the example of State Highway 73 and West Coasters apparently not wanting to be unnecessarily delayed on the road to go about their business in Canterbury, including urgent medical appointments.
Haddock understood from the agency that "people don't want to be chopping and changing all the time".
"But it's unacceptable on State Highway 73 where people have got certain times they have to get to Christchurch," he said.
"There is no doubt there are certain areas that need speed reductions to avoid crashes... but what we don't want to see is it going for 50 miles or 100km or something."
* Public interest journalism funded through NZ On Air
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Horse rider pleads for support to keep them safe on roads
A nationwide campaign to have horse-riders officially recognised as vulnerable road users has been offered supported by the West Coast’s Regional Transport committee.
The committee heard a presentation this month from equestrian safety advocate Julia McLean, who recently took a petition to Parliament on behalf of riding associations across the country.
The petition, signed by close to 9000 people, asks the government to recognise the vulnerability of horse riders in transport legislation.
“Currently we sit in the ‘other road user’ category and that gives no benefits whatsoever and most critically we are not included in education or road safety-messaging,” McLean said.
Horse-riders were continually dealing with reckless and dangerous behaviour by motorists, she told the committee.
“We get reports from our rider groups of horses being killed: there was one in Reefton, and another in Ruatoki; just two weeks ago a horse was hit and killed by a truck and the rider was taken to hospital."
Riders were also put at risk by aggressive drivers tooting their horns, winding down their windows and shouting, and passing at speed and too closely, she told the committee.
But unlike accidents involving pedestrians, cyclists and other vulnerable road users, such incidents involving horses were not captured in the statistics.
When she had asked NZTA for data, said said all it could tell her was that it had issued 13 infringements in 13 years, for failing to take care around a ridden animal or stock.
“When someone comes so close they touch your stirrup, or they hoot their horn as they go past ... it’s the abuse - it’s everywhere."
In a case down south, a truck driver refused to slow down despite hand signals and the rider fell off just in front of him, she said.
She had asked the road safety director for NZ Police to look at providing a ‘tick-box’ for horse-riders in incident reports, Ms McLean said.
“It’s a small, low-cost measure that would allow us to have some proper data, an informed understanding of what’s happening out there on the roads, and in turn some targeted road safety messaging.”
She was motivated to become a safety advocate by her own experience at the age of 25, when she fractured her skull in a near-fatal riding accident on a Kaiapoi road.
“I lost all memory of my childhood; my sense of taste and smell is gone forever. I was in a coma for week, I lost my career and it’s taken me 16 years to fully recover,” she told LDR.
Her accident had not been caused by a car: her horse had shied and thrown her when a piece of paper on the verge moved suddenly in the wind.
But the incident was a grim reminder of what could happen if a horse were startled, she said.
The UK and Australia had recently changed their road codes to give drivers explicit instructions on passing horses.
“It needs to be explicit. We can’t assume people just get it anymore. Common sense is not a thing. We actually have to tell people what we require, to pass a horse wide and slow - wide is two metres.”
A total of 37 organisations were now endorsing her campaign, including police, trucking companies, pony clubs and 10 other regional councils, McLean told the committee.
Transport Committee chairperson Peter Ewen was supportive of Ms McLeans safety campaign.
“In rural New Zealand we have a lot of narrow roads, and we do have riders on them – I would like to think that courtesy is given to those riders."
Regional council chairperson Peter Haddock said he sympathised with the cause but had reservations about riders on state highways.
“I would encourage it on low volume council roads but would struggle to support riding on highways where you’ve got traffic following closely behind.
“It’s difficult to find you suddenly have a horse in front of you and slowly pass it and go from 100kphs to 10kphs. It’s a dangerous situation."
McLean said horse riders did not want to ride on highways, and accidents were happening on 50kph local roads.
She appealed to West Coast mayors and chairs present to consider horse riders when they built shared pathways like cycle trails.
“We don’t need a hard surface, just a bit of dirt or grass at the side.”
The Transport Committee agreed to draft a letter to the national transport authorities, endorsing McLean’s safety campaign but stating its reservations about horses on highways.
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