Dear Editor. In the latest Martinborough Star there is an article regards new speed limits for the Martinborough Square it stated “Who saw that coming?”
A number of locals did because in my case I attended both of the SWDC consultation meetings held under the old Council’s watch and made written and oral submissions at both.
Generally speaking I am fully in support of the proposed speed limit reductions they will benefit the community and visitors greatly.
When it comes to this speed limit proposal for the Square, the SWDC are intending to drop the 50kph limit around the Square to 30kph so now we see bureaucracy and common sense go out the window.
The current speed limit around the Square is 50 kph. Anyone who drives the Square will know the 4 sides are so short in length one struggles to get up to 50kph, I would suggest 99% of drivers cruise slowly around the Square and very rarely go nowhere near 50 kph.
In the Councils own consultation document it states that the current mean speed of motorists in the Square is 27kph, using the 85th percentile road engineering principle that means around 85% of drivers travel at 27kph around the Square and the other 15% at some other speed which could be 30kph, 40kph or whatever.
The Council states that historically the minor injury crash rate statistics per year is 0.6 so negligible to warrant saying the reduction is based on a significant crash history and or due to speed.
That is not the end of this saga as I pointed out to the consultation committee there are 8 intersecting streets around the Square. If they reduce the speed limit to 30kph they are going to have to, by law erect eight new 30kph speed limit signs on those streets prior to intersecting with the Square so motorists know the new limit, conversely eight further signs will need to be erected on those streets to remind motorists leaving the 30kph Square that they are going back into a 50kph area.
In the road engineering world there is an expression which refers to visual pollution, clutter and excessive unattractive signage something SWDC appear to have ignored.
The kicker I would suggest is who is going to enforce this speed limit reduction, highly unlikely a fixed speed camera pole, unlikely a speed camera van and finally a lone Police Constable standing in the Square with his hand held Lidar speed detector. Really?
So 16 new speed limit signs later (possibly double that if the traffic flow exceeds 500 vehicles per annum on that street i.e. two on each road instead of one as per the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024) a trashy bunch of visual pollution created for in my view no fact based reason.
