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Leigh residents are vowing to carry on their fight against plans to introduce a blanket 30km/h speed limit in the town, following an online meeting with Auckland Transport (AT) on June 7.
Campaign organiser Tony Enderby said although the meeting was well run and mostly cordial, it was a struggle to get answers to key questions that applied specifically to Leigh and a few people were losing patience by the end.
“As soon as we questioned any of the generic facts they put forward, they had no answers,” he said.
“They did concede that they probably could put slower speeds around the school and preschool in school hours. But they’ve got this fixation with doing the whole town.
“They didn’t answer why it was just Leigh, just said it was one of a number of schools chosen.”
As well AT’s five-strong speed programme team, led by Safe Speeds director Nathan Cammock, the meeting was attended by Rodney Local Board member Beth Houlbrooke, representatives from Leigh
School and Preschool, Keep It 100 speed campaigner Geoff Upson and several Leigh residents.
Issues raised included the fact that there had been no crashes in Leigh for years, problems for Lee Fish and other trucks on steep hills in and out of town, and the need for road improvements before any new speed restrictions.
Enderby said after the meeting that a 464-signature petition had been presented to AT and residents would continue to lobby AT staff and others.
AT said last week that Leigh was not alone and that other schools would follow in Rodney.
“We are bound by legal constraints to make sure speed limits are safe and appropriate, and to implement 30km/h around all of Auckland’s schools, which means that some changes are still likely and we will work towards a final proposal over the next two months,” a spokesperson said.
“Leigh School is not the first school in Rodney to have these types of changes proposed around it. Phase 2 included Matua Ngaru School at Kumeu for permanent 30km/h speed limits, as this was another area where our investigations found average driver speeds to be relatively low.
“The next phase of our programme will also include a significant amount of schools, including many further schools in the Rodney area.”
AT said it would take all the feedback from the meeting into account, as well as submissions made during the consultation period, when making its final recommendation to the AT Board. The spokesperson added that although “some interim information” could be provided to the Leigh community in around eight weeks’ time, no formal update could be provided until after team’s final report had gone to the AT board and been approved.
