The last two weeks have been a little bit frustrating as we have been trying to get our website onto a new site and make a few layout changes as well. There’s still some layout tweaks to go, but at least we’re live again! The last two weeks may have also been interesting for those of you who ride in central Christchurch, thanks to the latest addition:
Back on March 12th, the City Council introduced a 30km/h speed limit within the central city (actually it was CERA who proposed the idea two years ago as part of their Accessible City transport plan). As we have explained previously, walking and cycling are big winners when lower speeds are introduced, although everyone benefits from the crash savings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were plenty of grumbles about it, with predictions of woe and disaster for central city motorists and businesses alike. Quite how losing a few seconds in your travel time is the death knell for the central city is quite beyond me.
One reasonable grumble is that it is not always obvious why you should have to slow down. Fair enough, there are still plenty of streets in the central city that need to be reconstructed as part of the Accessible City plan (and some of those will be five years away). As you can see from the photo above, sometimes the speed signs are already doing well to stay in view to approaching road users. Perhaps, for the boundary signs at least, they should have considered larger signs that explained the need for the speed reduction, like the ones I saw in Australia that said “High Pedestrian Activity Area”? That seems to work well when we have school speed zones and on entering urban areas.
What do you think of the new 30km/h speed zone? Do you feel any safer?
Why are so many of the 30kph signs obscured? – see photo on article, and also signs as you come into Cashel St 30kph zone from the east….
I just drove through the city for the first time the other night and it took me a block to realise/ remember the 30 km/h limit. Driving in and out of the area it got hard to keep track of what speed limit was where. With so much construction etc. going on, it can be easy to miss the signs if it changes block by block and there’s no other obvious visual prompt. Some kind of marking on the road at the threshold like a cross-hatching or colour for a few metres would have made it more noticeable.
Plus, I didn’t sleep that well that night. I blame the 30 km/h zone…