Petition to enforce 30 km speed limit around Auckland University and AUT

Sign the petition here. Students are asking Auckland Transport to do more to enforce the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street and around the UOA and AUT City Campuses

Students should be able to come onto their campus to attend lectures, study, and have fun with mates without fear of being run over.

That clearly isn’t the case, as the car crash on Symonds Street last Monday tragically proved. Both UOA staff and students were victims. Five were injured, three were hospitalised, and one was put into critical care. Dozens were near misses, and countless more were traumatised by the incident.

It could have been a lot worse, and it could have been any one of us who was affected. Eyewitnesses reported the car driving 30 km/hr in excess of the 50 km/hr speed limit.

But 50 km/hr isn’t the legal speed limit on Symonds Street…

 

The remains of the car wreck from last week. Photo Credit: RNZ / Calvin Samuel

The actual speed limit for Symonds Street is 30 km/hr

 

The legal speed limit where Symonds Street intersects the UOA City Campus is 30 km/hr. The pin in the image was dropped at the site of the car crash last Monday. Source: National Speed Limit Register.

In fact, it’s 30 km/hr for the whole CBD area. Are you also surprised? I was, too. No drivers stick to the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street. In fact, the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street is so unknown that Radio New Zealand (RNZ) got it wrong in their article covering the crash, claiming it was 40 km/hr.

Driving down Symonds Street at 50 km/hr should incur 35 demerit points. Two commutes into town via Symonds Street should suspend most drivers’ licenses if the speed limit is actually enforced.Accidents happen, sure. But anyone who’s spent any amount of time at our City Campus knows that Symonds Street is treated like a drag racing strip during the day by irresponsible drivers. I can’t recall how often I’ve had lectures interrupted by the sounds of engines revving and backfiring as those idiots hoon up and down.

And this is not an anecdotal observation; it’s been recorded and reported on before, years ago, that 95% of drivers don’t stick to the legal speed limit on Symonds Street. To this day, they still speed past our uni with seemingly no consequences in sight. Unsurprisingly, even on just a brief search, you can find reports of crashes happening all the time on Symonds Street, year after year.

The consistent lack of enforcement of the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street meant that what happened last Monday was an accident waiting to happen.And it makes sense people would speed. Not only is there a lack of speed limit signs reminding people to slow down, but the street is fairly straight and flat, with wide lanes, which encourages “causal” speeding. In the suburbs, streets like this get the Speed Bump treatment to force drivers to slow down. However, in the CBD, there are no such measures in place.

 

Image of Symonds Street from above. Photo Credit: RayWhite

The only regular monitoring the NZ Police currently do on Symonds Street is a red-light camera by Newton Road, about 1.5 km away from where last week’s accident occurred.

“But Symonds Street is pretty much a main road with many heavy vehicles using it, like buses and trucks coming up from the port. Speed bumps would be too disruptive”

Well, what about this counterexample? The Great North Road is one of Auckland’s busiest main roads, about 50,000 cars a day drive over it. But even the Great North Road has a speed bump (pictured below) and a speed cam