Speed Management Plan

We’ve reviewed the speed limits in the district and developed a speed management plan, including some traffic calming work, to keep people on our roads safe.

About our Speed Management Plan | Ngā kaupapa o He Tauira Mahere Whakahaere Waka Whakatere

We’ve collated our speed management initiatives into a Speed Management Plan for the District. This relates to roads we have control over, which doesn’t include state highways. To develop this plan, 106 roads were selected to be considered for change. We selected these roads after considering reports of crashes, roads in the vicinity of schools, and roads that were the topic of customer requests. Each road was reviewed and improvements identified, these include some speed limit reductions, and some areas where work is needed to reduce or support existing travel speeds.

As this is the first plan to have been developed it will be reviewed next year (in 2023) and then every three years after that. This aligns with the National Land Transport Programme funding timelines.

Council Decisions

The Council received 64 submissions on the draft Speed Management Plan and considered the feedback on 13 July 2022. As a result of community feedback some changes were made to the draft plan.

View the Council decisions regarding changes to the draft plan (PDF, 428KB) 

When will speed limits change?

Once the speed management plan has been updated reflecting Council’s decisions it will be uploaded into the National Speed Limit Register. After this, we’ll develop an implementation plan to provide a programme of works and timeline for installation. The timing for the speed limits to come into force will depend on how much physical work is required to support the speed limit change. The speed limit is enforceable by the NZ Police, once the speed limit signs are installed on the road. We will give you plenty of advance notice as to when and where this will occur on our roads.

State highways

A separate Speed Management Plan will be developed by Waka Kotahi for all state highways as these are not under our control, so we can’t make changes to their speed limits. Examples of state highways include roads such as Parry Palm Avenue in Waihi, Belmont/Normanby Roads in Paeroa, and Orchard Road in Ngatea.

When Waka Kotahi makes its speed management plan available for comment, we will let our residents know how they can give feedback.