The West Coast regional transport committee was forced to withdraw its draft regional speed management plan this week after Transport Minister Simeon Brown signed a new speed limit rule that overrides it.
It also strips councils of their ability to submit their own safety plans in future, staff have reported.
The four councils on the West Coast had written a single regional plan to improve efficiency and co-ordination, which included some small, fixed-speed zones around schools.
It also proposed to lower speeds limits on several roads causing concern for locals.
But the minister’s new rule allows only variable limits outside schools and requires councils to reverse any speed limits that were changed.
The draft West Coast transport plan was publicly consulted on over four weeks in March and April, and cost the regional council $78,000 to develop — not including staff time.
Transport committee chairman Peter Ewen said there were bigger costs for the three district councils in completing their sections of the plan.
"Buller spent $172,000 and Westland would have been close to that. When you add them all up, you’d be pushing $500,000, and it’s gone."
There was no way the government would be reimbursing councils for the wasted time and money, Cr Ewen said.
"But if there’s another change of government in a few years, are we going to be spending more money we can’t afford all for nothing because the incoming government throws this out?"
Under the latest changes, reduced speed limits of 30kmh will apply to urban schools during high-risk pick-up and drop-off times, and there will be a similar limit of 60kmh or less on roads that pass rural schools.
The speed limit on roads of national significance will rise to 120kmh.
The minister has said it made no sense to slow down a tradesperson passing a school at 5am on the way to work, and the changes would improve traffic flows.
A staff report to this week’s regional transport committee meeting said district councils could still submit individual speed management plans.
But they would have to do a separate cost-benefit analysis for each road being considered for a speed change, followed by a six-week community consultation.
The government had now removed the NZTA subsidies that previously applied to that work, West Coast Regional Council policy manager Max Dickens said.
There was still a significant chance a council’s proposed change would be rejected by the director of land transport if the proposed limit did not meet the government’s new speed limit classifications, he said.
Safety outcomes were likely to become worse and the largest risk was that councils would lose the ability to control the roads they had authority over, he said.
Mr Brown recently told Local Democracy Reporting New Zealanders had rejected a blanket and untargeted approach to reducing speed limits.
Consultation highlighted "broad support" for the government’s new rule, 65% of submitters supporting the reversal of blanket speed limit reductions.
The new speed rules apply from July 1, next year.
— Lois Williams, Local Democracy Reporting
- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
