John MacDonald: What's so wrong with slower traffic outside schools?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

If I say to you “30 kph speed limit area”, chances are you can think of one. I can think of one straight away - on the southern end of Colombo Street in Christchurch.

You’re cruising along at 50 kph and then —bang— it drops down to 30. No schools on that stretch of Colombo.

There’s a school on one of the side streets, but it goes down to 30 —and it’s permanent— and then it’s back up to 50 by the time you get up to Thorrington School. Where you would think there would be a 30 kph limit.

Someone was telling me this morning about another one like that on Gloucester Street between Linwood Ave and Woodham Road. Again – no schools, no kindys, but still 30 kph. All the time.

So there are two examples where I think the Government’s doing the right thing getting rid of these 24/7 30 kph zones. But I think it’s going too far, because I actually think there is a place for them.

And this is what’s covered in these guidelines for local councils, because it’s the local councils that are responsible for all the signage in their areas.

So the Government is going to ditch the permanent 30 kph zones but the speed limit around schools will be allowed to drop down to 30 kph, but only during morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times, and I reckon that will be a complete waste of time and effort.

Not to mention money, either. Because if there isn’t already one of those flashing signs outside a school which can show different speed limits at different times, then one of those is going to have to be installed, as well.

But I don’t give two hoots about the money side of it.

What bothers me is the fact that if we have different speed limits outside schools at different times of the day, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you?

Drivers are just going to go 50 kph all the time. And why’s that? They’ll go 50 all the time because they are creatures of habit. We’re all creatures of habit.

And, if we’re told that we can drive 50 kph past a school pretty much 23-hours-a-day - then that’s what we’ll do during the 60 minutes when these 30 kph limits will supposedly be in place.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, that doesn’t stack up because most of the time when kids are arriving at school and leaving for the day, traffic is close to a standstill because of all the parents who insist they have to drive right up to the gate to pick up their kids.

And you might be right in some cases, but from what I see, that is for a very short window of time.

If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t need the kids out there in the mornings and the afternoons doing the lollipop patrols, would we?

But we do have them, because most drivers are bozos. I’m a bozo. You’re a bozo. I’ll put my hand up right now and admit that I’ve driven past school crossings sometimes in ways that, afterwards, I’ve felt terrible about.

And generally, it’s all about speed.

I was reading some comments by the head of the Board of Trustees at Linwood Ave School. She was saying that returning speed limits back to 50 kph is going to be a backwards step, and I agree with her.

I gather the speed limit outside Linwood Ave School went down to 30 kph earlier this year. She was saying it hasn’t necessarily slowed-down traffic, but she sees it as a start.

And that’s a key thing here too. It can take as long as seven years to change behaviours, which says to me that we need to give these permanent 30 kph speed limits outside schools more time to bed in.

Just because the traffic isn’t any slower today outside Linwood Ave School, for example, than it was before the permanent speed limit went down - that doesn’t mean it’s failed. That doesn’t mean it should be done away with. It just means we need to give it more time.

Because I bet you that if the Government stuck with it, we would see people driving slower around schools - eventually. And what would be wrong with that?

There'd be nothing wrong with that.

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