By Andrew Bydder, Hamilton City Councillor
Despite Mayor Southgate’s promises of no more speed bumps, the council is planning speed bumps for Hamiton’s major arterial ring road. Councils and their advisors around the world know that the public hate speed bumps, so instead of listening to the people, they have named these new speed bumps ‘Raised Safety Platforms’. This goes along with the misnomer ‘Traffic Calming’, a ubiquitous term for their efforts to frustrate the hell out of drivers.
Wairere Drive was designed and engineered to be safe for 80 km/h traffic flow with high volumes to keep Hamilton moving. It works by having few intersections to break the flow, and (mostly) has roundabouts in preference to traffic lights. Deliberately slowing traffic on the route with speed bumps is sabotaging the network and attacking the whole the city.
The excuse for this attack is a new Pak n Save planned for Te Rapa, near The Base. There is nothing unusual about the new supermarket that justifies the attack – in fact it is beside a Countdown and a K-Mart. Yet the council is forcing Pak n Save to pay for building a new lights-controlled intersection at Karewa Place, over half a kilometre from the Pak n Save site. Karewa Place already has a simple and functional left-turn-only slip lane to Wairere Drive that does not disrupt traffic. Lights at the nearby crossing with Te Rapa Road means there are frequent breaks in the traffic to allow good flow from the Karewa connection. It works. There is no need to touch it.
Pak n Save site (red) on top-left, Karewa Place intersection (purple) on right. Te Rapa Road and The Base is at the bottom.
View of existing Karewa Place intersection with Wairere Drive
Instead, council has ordered Pak n Save to disrupt Wairere Drive with a right-turning lane into Karewa Place. This seemingly simple change starts a cascade of effects. It can only be done with traffic lights, which then requires the speed limit to be lowered to 60 km/h, which (according to their own safety audits) means speed bumps are compulsory.
Figure 2A from Page 28 of the Council Agenda 3 December 2024
Calling the speed bumps an attack might sound like hyperbole, but it is part of coordinated council action across the country to cut speeds and remove car parks. In this case, the council is using the new work as an excuse to lower the speed limit through the next intersection as well – 2 ½ times the distance required by their own rules. It has got so bad that the National coalition government was prompted to act, ordering such speed reductions to be reversed.
Figure 3 from Page 30 of the Council Agenda 3 December 2024
Pak n Save has been trying to get resource consent for the supermarket for 5 years – another fundamental problem with the system. They just want to get on and build it, and the delays have cost them far more than the roadworks will cost. But the speed reversal means they cannot comply with the council rules, which means the supermarket is stopped dead, along with 150 jobs and major investment.
The solution is simple. The council has the power to amend the resource consent to remove the intersection changes. It could be done in a day. In a council meeting on 3 December 2024, I pointed out that the sole reason for the right-turning lane is to ease pressure on the Te Rapa Road crossing from new Pak n Save customers. The right-turning lane is from the west-bound side of Wairere Drive, which has peak traffic in the morning rush hour from Flagstaff to Te Rapa and the city centre. The simple and obvious fact is that people don’t do their grocery shopping on the way to work. The pressure doesn’t exist, and the right-turning lane is not needed.
Instead, the council decided to create a 6-month delay to lobby the government for an exemption to lower the speed limit again. When they did this the first time, 80% of public submissions were against the lowering. They just don’t care about you.
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Further reading on this issue
Opposing the planned raised platform on Wairere Drive at the Karewa Place turnoff
