Arotake hei haumaru ana te haere i ngā huarahi o te tāone

Safer speeds review Urban roads

Status: Closed

Feedback closed: 5pm on Friday 18 June 2021

We want to make our roads safer for everyone who uses them – including pedestrians, drivers and cyclists. So as part of a nationwide project, NPDC has been reviewing speed on our urban and rural roads.

In all crashes, speed determines how badly injured a person is. By reducing vehicle speeds, we make our roads safer for all road users.

Late last year we talked with the community about safer speeds on our rural roads. Now we’re focusing on urban roads throughout our district (excluding state highways).

Safer speeds on urban roads

Right now we’re opening a discussion with our community to understand people’s sense of safety on our roads and consider what speeds might be desirable for increased safety. 

If NPDC were to follow how other districts in New Zealand are setting speed limits, some things we could see on are roads include:

  • Dropping the speed limit from 50km/h to 40km/h on some of our local roads (mostly residential streets).
  • Dropping the speed limit to 30km/h around all urban schools.
  • Dropping speed limits to 30km/h in our retail centres of Westown, Fitzroy, Bell Block and Waitara, and in a wider area of New Plymouth’s CBD. Note: centres such as Urenui, Inglewood, Moturoa and Ōākura are not included as they are state highways and under the control of Waka Kotahi/NZ Transport Agency.

The speed limit around urban schools would be variable (active only during drop-off and pick-up times) for schools on arterial routes, and permanent for schools on residential streets.


 

Road Crossing

 

To see what these would look like for each urban road, please click on this map:

 

Interactive Map