School Safety Project

We’re currently undertaking a district wide approach to making streets around schools safer.

Avon Primary School safety improvements

We’re making improvements to the pedestrian crossing outside Avon Primary School. This includes:

Raising the pedestrian crossing
Providing pedestrian islands on one side of the street

This work is also part of a wider initiative to increase opportunities for tamariki to walk and bike to school. Watch this space!

If you have any questions about this work, please contact us on 06 765 6099

Stratford High School safety improvements

Using feedback we’ve received from the school community, residents and wider community, we’ve developed a design to implement safety improvements around Stratford High School.

A detailed outline of the changes is available here.

In summary some of the changes we are making:

Slowing traffic speeds (as proposed below)
Upgrading the existing pedestrian crossing
Providing additional crossing facilities and pedestrian islands
Removing a section of berm to create recessed parking bays across the road from the school between Fenton Street and Cloten Road.

Work on some of these improvements started in 2022 and will be completed by April 2023.

School Zone Speeds

As part of the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2022, which came into effect on 19 May 2022, we're lowering the speed limits in school zones across our district.

We're proposing to change the permanent speed to 30 km/hr for urban school zones and 60 km/hr for rural school zones. During June we asked for feedback from our school communities and properties that are within the school zones impacted. Using their feedback we've made some minor amendments to the original proposal.

The proposed speed limits and zones can be viewed by clicking on the below school names.

We are working with Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency to reduce the speed around the remaining four schools in our district (Hiuakama School, Marco School, Ngaere School, and Toko School). Waka Kotahi will manage the speed limits for these schools.

We've sought feedback on these changes in two stages:

Stage One – Engagement with the school community and residents identified as being directly affected with the proposed speed changes (June 2022). If you live in one of the above school zones you would have received a letter asking for your feedback on the proposed speed change for that school. Feedback for this part of consultation closed on 30 June 2022.

Stage Two – Consultation with the wider community on all school speed changes (August 2022). After receiving feedback from our school community and residents, we reviewed our proposals and asked the wider community to provide feedback on all school zone speed limits at once.

Why are we doing this?

Our vision is to improve the safety of streets near school entrances for all road users, increase active travel to school and reduce congestion on our roads.

Some of the issues we are experiencing around our schools are:

Driving behaviour outside the school that is often illegal and puts kids at risk
Near misses that make walking and cycling feel unsafe
Safety issues that are a key barrier to active school travel
Driving behaviour outside the school that contributes to congestion and queueing. Which impacts on other road users.

For more information about this project you can contact us on 06 765 6099 or email staylor@stratford.govt.nz