Slow speeds neighbourhood - Papanui

The main purpose “Slow Speed Neighbourhoods” is to create a safer and quieter street environment for all residents and road users. Slower speeds are expected to reduce the occurrence of crashes and their severity if they do occur. The OECD’s International Transport Forum Speed and Crash Risk report(external link) outlines the relationship between speed and crash occurrence and severity. It shows that if impact speed increases from 30 km/h to 40 km/h the risk of fatal injury to a pedestrian or cyclist is about doubled. Other internationally adopted research supports the recommendation that relatively small changes in speed can have a high impact on crash survival rates.

Improving safety on local roads in Christchurch is a priority for Christchurch City Council and is also a national priority under the principles and guidance of the Road to Zero - New Zealand’s road safety strategy for 2020-2030. Road to Zero sets an initial target to reduce deaths and serious injuries on New Zealand’s roads, streets, cycle ways, and footpaths by 40 percent over the next 10 years. There are several focus areas being looked at nationally to achieve this, but where significant difference can be made is through having safe and appropriate speeds on our roads. 

Feedback from residents is one of the main starting points. After receiving strong feedback from the residents of a certain locality/neighbourhood, staff investigate various other parameters like proximity to a high-speed location, presence of pedestrian generating activities nearby etc., to recommend a specific locality/neighbourhood for reduced speeds.

Christchurch City Council notify the Police through consultation and prior to a speed limit changing of the new limits. Council typically does request that monitoring of the new speed limit is undertaken at Police discretion, however has no control over Police resourcing/allocation of effort. Therefore, the task of increasing enforcement in the area sits with the Police. Council works closely with Police however and can raise this as a concern in this area.

Traffic calming measures such as speed humps are not specifically funded in Council’s Long Term Plan. The Minor Road Safety and Minor Safety Interventions programme budgets can potentially be used to fund traffic calming projects if there is a clearly defined road safety issue and/or crash history that needs to be addressed. However, most traffic calming projects often fall short when compared and prioritised against other candidate projects that need to be funded from these programme budgets. The idea is not to wait for crashes to happen. But, due to the availability of limited funding, locations with historically a higher number of injury crashes or higher crash risk need to be prioritised.

Various factors like crash history, crash risk, general vehicle operating speeds, existing road environment, nature of adjoining business or locations of interest. The available funding plays a role in deciding whether traffic calming can be warranted at any specific location.