School Safety Project
We’re currently undertaking a district wide approach to making streets around schools safer. We're proposing to change the speed limit outside our schools to help. This is part of the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2022, which came into effect on the 19 May 2022.
Our proposal includes changing the permanent speed to 30 km/hr for urban schools and 60 km/hr for rural schools. The schools we are working with are:
- Avon School
- Makahu School
- Midhirst School
- Pembroke School
- St Joseph’s Catholic School
- Stratford High School
- Stratford Primary School.
The remaining five schools (Hiuakama School, Marco School, Ngaere School, Taranaki Diocesan, and Toko School) have frontages with state highways and so we are working with Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency to reduce the speed around these schools. Waka Kotahi will manage the speed limits for these schools.
We're currently consulting on this proposal with the school community and surrounding residents. Consultation is in two parts:
Stage One – Consultation with the school community and residents identified as being directly affected with the proposed speed changes (June 2022). If you live in one 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 closes on 30 June 2022.
Stage Two – Consultation with the wider community on all school speed changes (July / August 2022). Once we have feedback from our school community and residents, we'll review our proposals and ask 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
