Residents of a seaside suburb in Auckland have been campaigning to reverse the reversal of speed limit reductions on their main road, for fear the changes may end in a fatality.
The Twin Coast Discovery Highway passes through a number of suburbs on the Hibiscus Coast. Like all major roads, the speed limit changes as it passes through residential areas. In beachside Ōrewa, it’s set at 50km/h. Slightly further north on the rural stretch leading into Waiwera, it’s also 60km/h. But between the two sits the small suburb of Hatfields Beach, where the highway winds past residential streets. The speed limit there? As of late March, 70km/h.
In line with the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024, by July 1, road controlling authorities are required to reverse “blanket” speed limit reductions imposed by the Labour government in 2020. As an urban connector road, the speed limit for Twin Coast Discovery Highway, which runs through the Hibiscus Coast, can be set between 50-80km/h. Alternative speed limits can be considered for roads adjacent to a beach with public access (at 10-60km/h), or urban streets with “significant levels of pedestrian and/or cycling activity” (set at 40km/h).
Under the old regime, the speed limit for the Hatfields Beach section of the Twin Coast Discovery Highway was reduced from a 70km speed limit to 60km in June 2020, then further reduced to 50km in May 2023. But in late March this year, the speed limit on the road was bumped back up to 70km/h.
Though the speed limit reversals have only been in effect in Hatfields Beach for a month, its residents say they have sent numerous complaints to transport minister Chris Bishop, Auckland Transport (AT), the police and their local MP, Mark Mitchell. They’re concerned the new limits jeopardise the community’s safety and defy sense given the more rural road next door to the town requires commuters to drive more slowly. They say these concerns have largely gone nowhere.
Kelly Paddison, who has lived in the area with her family for nearly 20 years, says it became “safer to move around the neighbourhood” when the speed limits were lowered, and the community has grown accustomed to a slow-and-steady way of life on the road. Now, she’s worried those “hooning” through the street will bring accidents in their wake.
There was significant congestion along the road years ago, Paddison said, when it was still a part of State Highway 1 – but since the Johnstones Hill Tunnels were opened in 2009 to extend the highway, this has significantly lessened any gridlock. However, the Twin Coast Discovery Highway is still an option for those who don’t want to foot a toll road fee.
“I think what’s most important to us is that we’re feeling lost in the bureaucracy of it all,” Paddison says. She says complaints to Auckland Transport, which formally opposed the reversals, returned “it’s just the rules” and “our hands are tied” responses, while emails to Bishop and Mitchell haven’t returned anything at all.
Mum of four school-aged children Jasmin Tapp, a Hatfields Beach local for 10 years, shares Paddison’s safety concerns, saying she and other families often walk the main road and watch drivers “get nervous” as they realise there are no pathways for whānau to cross. There is one pedestrian crossing in the area, but many opt to try their luck with a quick dash across the road to reach the other side, rather than looping back to the crossing.
Tapp also takes issue with the cost of the speed limit changes in Auckland, which AT has estimated at $8.8m, with central government likely to contribute just over half. “We have a government where they’re making job cuts here, there and everywhere because they’re trying to get rid of unnecessary spending,” Tapp says. “They charge a fortune for the signage and the safety [assessment] needed when [reversing the speed limits] … that just seems very counterintuitive to what this government’s goal is.”
The Land Transport Rule was signed by former transport minister Simeon Brown in September 2024 – his National Party colleague Chris Bishop picked up the portfolio in a January caucus reshuffle. Bishop told The Spinoff that while National is committed to reversing speed limit reduction, a relevant road controlling authority can undertake a “speed review”.
“Road Controlling Authority (RCA), such as councils, can initiate new speed reviews for roads subject to reversal, provided the process meets the requirements of the Land Transport Rule: Setting of Speed Limits 2024 (the Rule),” the minister said in an emailed response to The Spinoff.
For that reason, the decision in this instance is a matter for Auckland Council and Auckland Transport, said Bishop. AT did not respond to a request for comment from The Spinoff in time for publication. However, it is understood that the agency must first roll out all the speed limit reversals in Auckland – for which there is a deadline of July 1 – before it considers reviews.
Local Mike Anderson says it wouldn’t be possible to hit 70km/h if you were trying to drive down the road safely – it has too many bends, there are too many residential roads and too many children attempting to cross it to be mindful of. “If you’re doing 70 down there, you’re an absolute jerk, to be honest.”
Anderson fears the worst. “I’m just worried some kids are going to get killed in that time,” he says. “It’s just so frustrating, because everyone knows it’s ridiculous … What I don’t understand is why Auckland Transport have thrown their hands up.”
Anderson, Tapp and Paddison all believe their community is, for the most part, firmly against the speed limit reversals. However, the reversals do have a fan in Geoff Upson, a self-described road safety campaigner and member of the Rodney Local Board, who says he has spoken to Hatfields Beach residents who are happy with the changes.
Upson says “upset people have been the vocal minority” in the speed limits debate, and that returning the road to its 50km/h limit wouldn’t necessarily mean that the “risk goes away”. The new setting of 70km/h is a “very comfortable” limit for the road, he says, and a generation of Aucklanders are used to driving at the speed on the road given it was once a part of State Highway 1.
The real problem, Upson reckons, is that the 70km/h limit ends once you pass Hatfield Beach to enter Waiwera – it’s a more rural section of the road, but as it is not an urban connector by Auckland Transport’s definition, the limit cannot be lifted. Upson says the frustration with how speed limits have been implemented around the city rests with the fact that Auckland Transport opted to make decisions about the limits while sitting in their offices, rather than going out and inspecting the roads.
Hatfields Beach isn’t the only neighbourhood in Aotearoa where residents are trying to fight speed limit reversals. In Wellington’s Berhampore, locals have been campaigning against the speed limit reversals that have seen some streets rise from 30km/h to 50km/h – their local MP, Julie-Anne Genter, had penned an open letter to Bishop, who said the Green Party MP’s feedback was better placed with Wellington Council and the New Zealand Transport Agency.
Communities in areas including Nelson, Horowhenua, New Plymouth and Gisborne are also making their opposition heard, as well as school principals across Auckland. Whether they will have any success remains to be seen. In April, Wellington High Court’s Justice Radich dismissed an interim order submitted by transport advocacy group Movement to halt all speed limit reversals until their judicial review into the policy is heard later this year.
