By Jamie Hosking¹, Christopher Wakeman², Braden Te Ao³, Teuila Percival⁴ AND Shanthi Ameratunga⁵ 

We all want our neighbourhoods to be good places to live. Good neighbourhoods are places where people, especially children, can safely walk to school, and visit friends and neighbours. Making sure that our streets are calm around our homes and schools is an important tool for making streets and cities better places.

The government has recently proposed plans to remove much of the existing safer speed zones in neighbourhoods and around schools. Communities will no longer have 30-kilometres-per-hour safer speed limits, with the government instead enforcing 50-kilometres-per-hour urban speed limits, except in very restricted cases. Schools with permanent safer speed zones will have these removed, replaced by variable speed reductions applying only at the beginning and end of the school day, even though five out of six crashes and injuries around schools happen outside these times. The revised safer speeds will also only apply to streets immediately outside the school gate, and not other areas around the school.

We know current safer speed zones have been protecting people, preventing injuries and saving lives. Evidence shows that removing these 30-kilometres-per-hour safer speed limits is likely to increase deaths and serious injuries by more than 50 per cent on those streets.

Safer speed zones are particularly important for protecting tamariki Māori and Pacific Islander children, who are more likely to be exposed to high traffic areas when walking to school and be seriously injured by cars. Māori and Pacific Islander families also have more barriers to overcome when accessing health care after injuries.

Calming our streets is well supported by communities and school leaders

The vast majority of children (96 per cent in a survey in Tāmaki Makaurau) want to walk and cycle to school. Calming our streets with safe speed zones is one of the best tools we have to protect children so they can walk and cycle safely.

More than three quarters of school leaders in Tāmaki Makaurau support permanent safe speed zones around schools. The safer speeds that have been introduced elsewhere are also well supported by local communities, with a large petition in one community in particular. The government’s plan is to remove the option for these schools and communities to have these safer speed zones, no matter how much they want them.

The risks involved with the proposed changes have prompted many health professionals to advocate for retaining existing safer speed measures. Health professionals have supported retaining the ability to set safer speeds in communities. The New Zealand Trauma Committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons wrote to the government to express its concerns about the proposed changes. Healthy Auckland Together, a coalition of health and other organisations in Tāmaki Makaurau, submitted against the government’s plans. Alongside this, we recently published an article in The New Zealand Medical Journal setting out why we need to keep these safer speed zones in communities.

Auckland Council has also voted against the government plans to increase speed limits, and opposed the plan to remove permanent safe speed zones around schools.

Why keep safer speed zones?

Calming our streets using safer speed zones makes streets better for all of us. It helps our kids get around our neighbourhoods freely and independently, helping them get to school and visit friends. Calmer streets also help older people and people with a disability, among many other groups, to get around safely, and enjoy the multiple benefits of mobility and social connections.

We all benefit from streets that are better for walking around and easier to cross. Calming streets gives people the option to cycle, and makes it easier to walk to the bus or train. As well as opening our streets up more for walking and cycling, these safer speed zones help care for our environment, leading to cleaner air and less carbon emissions. They also reduce noise levels around our homes.

Around the world, cities have been bringing in more of these safer speed zones. One study reviewed 40 cities in Europe that had brought in 30-kilometres-per-hour zones. As well as large safety benefits, there was less fuel consumption, less emissions and traffic noise, and no increase in average congestion levels.

Lowering speeds through street design

Overall, safer speeds make cities better in a number of ways, and speed limits are an important tool for making this happen, but there are also other ways to slow speed through better infrastructure.

In the suburb of Māngere in Tāmaki Makaurau, a project called Te Ara Mua – Future Streets used changes in street design to lower traffic speeds and volumes. The project included redesigning key streets to slow traffic, better crossings for people walking, better connected paths through local parks, and new cycling infrastructure. Early results show that the project has led to big improvements in safety, and has also made it easier to get around the neighbourhood in a wheelchair. By making streets better places to cycle, the project has also helped support successful local cycling initiatives.

Calming our streets means better neighbourhoods, and safer speed limits are an important tool for making this happen. The government needs to make the responsible choice by rethinking its plan. We should draw on the compelling evidence from New Zealand and other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, and use safer speeds to make our cities safer, healthier, and better places for all of us to live in.

End notes

1. Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau/The University of Auckland
2. Department of Surgery, University of Otago, Christchurch
3. Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau/The University of Auckland
4. Director – Moana Connect, Auckland, and Paediatrician, South Auckland
5. Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Waipapa Taumata Rau/The University of Auckland