Sign our petition to enforce the 30 km speed limit around the UOA City campus

Sign our petition here. We are asking Auckland Transport to do more to enforce the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street and around the UOA and AUT City Campuses

Students should be able to come onto their campus to attend lectures, study, and have fun with mates without fear of being run over.

That clearly isn't the case, as the car crash on Symonds Street last Monday tragically proved. Both UOA staff and students were victims. Five were injured, three were hospitalised, and one was put into critical care. Dozens were near misses, and countless more were traumatised by the incident. It could have been a lot worse, and it could have been any one of us who was affected. Eyewitnesses reported the car driving 30 km/hr in excess of the 50 km/hr speed limit.

But 50 km/hr isn't the legal speed limit on Symonds Street...

The actual speed limit for Symonds Street is 30 km/hr.

In fact, it's 30 km/hr for the whole CBD area. Are you also surprised? I was, too. No drivers stick to the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street. In fact, the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street is so unknown that Radio New Zealand (RNZ) got it wrong in their article covering the crash, claiming it was 40 km/hr.

Driving down Symonds Street at 50 km/hr should incur 35 demerit points. Two commutes into town via Symonds Street should suspend most drivers of their license if the speed limit was actually enforced.

Accidents happen, sure. But anyone who's spent any amount of time at our City Campus knows that Symonds Street is treated like a drag racing strip during the day by irresponsible drivers. I can't recall how often I've had lectures interrupted by the sounds of engines revving and backfiring as those idiots hoon up and down.

And this is not an anecdotal observation; it's been recorded and reported on before, years ago, that 95% of drivers don't stick to the legal speed limit on Symonds Street. To this day, they still speed past our uni with seemingly no consequences in sight. Unsurprisingly, even on just a brief search, you can find reports of crashes happening all the time on Symonds Street, year after year.

The consistent lack of enforcement of the 30 km/hr speed limit on Symonds Street meant that what happened last Monday was an accident waiting to happen.

And it makes sense people would speed. Not only is there a lack of speed limit signs reminding people to slow down, but the street is fairly straight and flat, with wide lanes, which encourages "causal" speeding. In the suburbs, streets like this get the Speed Bump treatment to force drivers to slow down. However, in the CBD, there are no such measures in place.

The only regular monitoring the NZ Police currently do on Symonds Street is a red-light camera by Newton Road, about 1.5 km away from where last week's accident occurred.

"But Symonds Street is pretty much a main road with many heavy vehicles using it, like buses and trucks coming up from the port. Speed bumps would be too disruptive"

Well, what about this counterexample? The Great North Road is one of Auckland's busiest main roads, about 50,000 cars a day drive over it. But even the Great North Road has a speed bump (pictured below) and a speed cam.

We can go on till the cows come home about how reducing speed saves lives. However, Auckland Transport and Auckland Council should not rest on their laurels after they lowered the speed limit in the CBD to 30 km/hr in 2018. It's one thing to change a number; it's another thing to make people actually stick to that number as a limit, not just a speed suggestion. We need more enforcement. More signs, speed cams and speed bumps around our campuses to keep our staff and students safe.

Even our usually politically indifferent University has been super vocal about the importance of speed limits, criticising the Coalition Government's policies on increasing the speed limit. Surely, both staff and students can unite together to get Auckland Transport and Auckland City Council to do more to keep our campuses safe from the dangers of speeding.

In response to the recent crash, we have started a petition to the Waitematā Local Board to get Auckland Transport do more to enforce the 30 km/hr speed limit around the UOA and AUT City Campuses, particularly Symonds Street.

Please sign the petition if you also believe there should be more speed limit signage, a speed camera, and even a speed bump crossing installed at the Engineering/Hiwa crossing near the accident site to deter such tragedies from occurring ever again.

You can sign the petition here: https://chng.it/8MzfMPbLWh

Thank you for reposting and sharing our petition; together, we can make a difference.