Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency has identified more than 2500km of road as having speed limits too fast to be safe.
Last month, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins instructed the transport agency to narrow its speed management review to focus on only the 1% of state highways with the highest numbers of deaths and injuries, and where local communities supported change.
Waka Kotahi identified the new 2566km of roads where the speed limit was too fast for the state of the roads on its internal geospatial database, Megamaps, last week.
MegaMaps is understood to be a tool Waka Kotahi uses for its own research and planning.
The agency had earlier marked 7465km across New Zealand where the speed limit is higher than what it calls "safe and appropriate".
This equates to more than 85% of the country’s roads.
It says reducing the speed limits or improving the state of these roads would be a big help in reducing the road toll.
In an interim plan released last year, it proposed first targeting 3.2% of the state highway network with reduced speeds and safety improvements.
However, last month Mr Hipkins significantly narrowed the scope of the national speed reduction plan as part of a dramatic revision of the Labour Government’s policies heading into the next election.
Roading safety improvements, such as median barriers and rumble strips, would also still go ahead as priorities, he said.
There would also be targeted reductions in the areas immediately around schools, marae and in small townships that a state highway runs through.
Automobile Association (AA) Otago district council chairman Malcolm Budd, of Dunedin, said as far as it was concerned, any speed reductions had to be based on evidence and taken on a case-by-case basis.
He was not aware of any specific proposals to reduce speed limits of any Otago roads, or any roads which were clear candidates for speed reduction.
People needed to be aware of the road conditions and consider that the speed limit was the maximum speed rather than a designated speed of travel.
For instance, if a road was windy people should be accountable and reduce their speed, Mr Budd said.
He could not believe the agency had come up with 2566km of highways they considered too fast, just a month after the prime minister had told them to focus on the 1% which were most dangerous.
"It appears that the agency is not talking to the Government or the Government is not talking to the agency," Mr Budd said.
AA speed policy spokesman Dylan Thomsen said the new information and the prime minister’s decision to narrow the focus had created uncertainty.
The AA had been asking for clearer directions on what the way forward for speed reviews would be, he said.
A Waka Kotahi spokesman said local authorities used MegaMaps for their own reviews and the data would continue to be available for them.
The interim plan was also being reviewed to reflect Cabinet’s scaling back on proposed speed limit reductions and these changes were anticipated in the coming month.
The next full plan, which the Herald understood would have included far more extensive road safety and speed limit changes, is in development.
"We are also reviewing this plan to align with the new focus for speed management on state highway corridors," the Waka Kotahi spokesman said.
"Much of the ‘Full State Highway Speed Management Plan’ was already intended to be focused on schools, marae, townships and areas where there is clear public demand for speed changes."
Last year, 377 people died on New Zealand roads, more than the most recent pre-pandemic year — 2019 — when 350 were killed in road crashes.
— Staff reporter with additional reporting by The New Zealand Herald
