Speed around schools: Why are we making the streets more dangerous? – Simon Wilson

THREE KEY FACTS The Government ’s new Speed Rule , raising speed limits that were lowered in recent years, comes into effect on July 1. A coalition of road safety groups is seeking an injunction and a judicial review to stop this happening. 155 schools in Auckland alone will be affected.

Freemans Bay School is a mid-decile school with a roll of about 550. Although it’s a suburban school, there’s a motorway on-ramp 100m up the road. Many of the children come not from the suburb, but from the largest concentration of residential dwellings in the country: the apartment blocks on and around Hobson and Nelson streets, right next door in the central city.



Hobson and Nelson are also motorway ramps. This means there is no safe walking route from the city to the school and almost all the children are accompanied, every day, by a parent or other caregiver, and must cross a complex and dangerous mess of streets..