National weaponizes our impatience and lifts road speed limits for ‘growth’
Government announces roads where speed limit reductions will be reversed
The Government has announced the reversal of speed limit reductions on a large number of New Zealand roads, including many in the northern regions of the country.
The move will result in speed limits being increased on 38 sections of key routes, including parts of State Highway 1 in Northland, State Highway 16 near Auckland and State Highway 3 in Hamilton. Also on the list are changes to State Highway 2 between Featherston and Masterton, and State Highway 3 Whanganui.
A list of an additional 49 sections of roads is also being released for public consultation.
There is a perfect madness to this isn’t there?
National push and pump mass immigration.
That mass immigration has enormous impacts on our roads.
Our roads need upgrading which causes more gridlock.
National weaponises your impatience to lift speed limits that will generate more fatalities as National try to unclog the gridlock by privatising roads and pushing poor people off them, without investing in the public transport infrastructure for them to move to.
You have had your impatience at the gridlock manipulated into lifting speeding rates that won’t create productivity or make things safer.
Let’s be very honest.
We are such a cheap bastard nation altho we don’t build safe roads or well engineered roads.
We build cheap goat tracks through Mordor.
And because we are such a nation of cheap bastards we have this appalling carnage on the roads that costs us 4% of GDP!
4% of GDP from terrible car crashes!
It’s a social obligation and responsibility to properly fund and build safe roads when the damage being caused is 4% of GDP!
BUT because we are a nation of cheap bastards, instead of building and engineering safe roads we simply lower the speed limits which generates gridlock, impatience and extreme frustration because there are no upgrades to infrastructure to cope with the huge levels of immigration!
The road science is very clear...
Former chief science adviser for the Ministry of Transport, Simon Kingham, has criticised the proposal, saying it will increase the number of road casualties and injuries, deaths by air pollution, as well as increase greenhouse gas emissions.
…of course we should lower speeding limits but this must be ON TOP OF better built roads and better engineered public safety and we do that by TAXING THE RICH!
Not user pays, not more privatisation, we need a Ministry of Green Works that builds the roads and we need to propel fund it by TAXING THE RICH!
We need to see our roads as part of the common good and engineer it for safety, adaptation to climate change and funded by TAXING THE RICH!
Lifting speed limits and pretending that will magically see more growth is possibly the dumbest thing this Government have suggested to date.
It truly is remarkable that Kiwis are swallowing this.
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I’ve driven that Wairarapa stretch numerous times, and it’s not a good road for significantly increasing speed limits, too narrow. Nor has it ever been clogged with vehicles. Driven Germany’s autobahn too, rather fast and not entirely happily, but it’s a thousand times better than state highway two – Featherstone-Masterton.
Nobody’s all bad.
Dumb move, having calmed people down and got them almost used to going slower.
Increased productivity isn’t going to be the result if there are more hours sitting in traffic because of accidents. These speed increases won’t be in central city areas where most productive people are or need to be.
Instead in city areas we have millions of speed bumps which waste fuel and cause more wear and tear on vehicles, especially buses. That all inhibits productivity.
The two areas of govt, local and central, clearly don’t know how to work together.
Everything this govt. does reduces productivity.
People who fear for their jobs aren’t working harder or more. They are so stressed their work suffers and they need days off.
They know perfectly well, that politicians are not grateful for their efforts. Peters said yesterday some people should show more gratitude. That should extend to politicians of all stripes too.
People do not respond well to threats and coercion. Take note CoC.
No problem about slowing life down a bit. Still I cant fathom how we ever used to use roads that didnt have bumps and lumps of plastic and green paint and pictures of rainbows all over them. Everyone was just happy the road wasn’t gravel or mud. l guess traffic consultants need to make a buck.
The Coalition of Chaos have just reached a new level of dumbness…if that was at all possible.
Not only from an inevitable, terrible, increase carnage point of view but also their rationale from such idiocy…
Apparently it’s going to increase productivity and save businesses money….
Taking the last point first ..increasing the speed of a vehicle from 80km per hour to 100km per dramatically affects fuel consumption….i.e. the faster you go, the more it costs to cover the same distance…not to mention the extra drain on resources ..which is finite.
So while these people may, or may not, get to their destination fractionally faster, depending on what phase the lights are at when they hit town, they will be burning more money to get there.
The other argument is that if every vehicle saves 15seconds driving past a school faster…or 3 minutes driving from Wellington to Masterton , that the cumulative affect of those, supposed, time savings, will increase the country’s productivity…
They need to go back to school…
There is no evidence whatsoever to support that warped logic…
These drivers are travelling as individuals with no cohesive plan to tag the next driver from the same company when reaching destination….like they are in some sort of relay..
The vast, and many, on going variations that can happen to anyone who may reach a given destination 15 seconds or 3 minutes earlier, cannot be conflated and then concluded as to whether they have increased the country’s productivity.
The media should be asking Luxon, Brown and Bishop to provide the hard data to prove that productivity will be increased… but also… whether they have factored in the quid pro quo of the cost to the country, both financial and social, when the inevitable increase in deaths and serious injuries start occuring.
The real reason for increasing the speed limit is so the useless fuckwits in the CoC can make a fast getaway when they get booted out of the govt benches at the next election.
That will be inevitable….before the next election would be way more preferable…
Yep can’t come soon enough Grant.
New Zealand is full of cr*p roads which simply aren’t up to standard for 100k/hr. New Zealand is full of cr*p drivers who simply aren’t up to standard for 100k/hr. New Zealand is full of cr*p vehicles which simply aren’t up to standard for 100k/hr There’s more than one upgrade required.
Mainstre-am press ir there is such a thing dumbly treat this move as something cool. RNZ invited us to “watch as speed limits are rolled back” exciting viewing I’m sure!