Principals fear more kids will die as Govt cancels speed humps funding

Dozens of schools are dismayed to learn they won’t now get speed humps and raised crossings to reduce danger to children.
Wentworth school on the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, in Auckland’s north, has been pleading for a raised crossing on busy Gulf Harbour Drive for five years. This year, at 8.30am on a busy Friday morning, a pedestrian was seriously injured while families were making their way to school.
So too at Ranui primary school in West Auckland, where pleas for a raised crossing and other urgent action weren’t addressed in time to save a five-year-old boy from serious injury this year.
“He was run over by a car in a 50kph zone,” says Ranui principal Teressa Smith. “Speed calming interventions are important to make sure drivers are not just aware it is a school zone, but to deliberately slow cars down.”
Another affected school is the 1300-pupil Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Ōtara, whose executive principal, Kiri Turketo, has been asking for digital speed warning signs, yellow lines and raised crossings.
Turketo manages 150 staff and a $16m budget, but doesn’t have legal authority to ensure her pupils’ safety as they cross the road to class. So the collegiate, which has distinct junior, middle and senior schools, has been operating “illegal road patrols” stopping traffic on the road outside, even though there’s no pedestrian crossing.
“How many times do our kids have to get hit before the ministry or Auckland Transport does something about it?” she asks. “Ten or 12 years ago, a student was killed because a parent came hooning around the corner and lost control of the car and went up onto the sidewalk.”
These are among 15 schools in our biggest, busiest city, for which Auckland Transport engineers were processing requests for speed humps or raised crossings. They’re among more than 70 schools nationwide that were waiting for councils to confirm funding.
Those processes all ground to a halt on Monday, when Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the National Land Transport Fund would no longer contribute to speed humps, at all. The minister says “key highlights” of the $32.9 billion investment programme will be reducing funds for cycleways, and removing funding entirely for speed “bumps”, as he calls them.
Brown has ruled out funding from the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi for speed humps on the state highway network (“I think we’ve stopped 24 speed bumps just on the state highway network; they cost about half a million each so that’s a saving”) and from the National Land Transport Fund for local roads.
At Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, Turketo is writing to Simeon Brown and Wayne Brown, inviting them to visit at 2.30pm on a school day to see the “chaos” on the roads outside.
She says there are no buses or trains running nearby, so students walk to and from school or get dropped off by family. And there are no clear road markings to help drivers navigate the school area, or physical deterrents such as speed humps to slow them down. “We have had many accidents over the years with fender benders, road rage from parents and children getting hit by cars.”
Turketo says there’s a very real inequity in the lack of roading infrastructure in the suburb of Ōtara. “One just needs to drive from the central suburbs to Ōtara to see where the rates are being prioritised.”
“When we talk about the barriers to learning, as principal, I am discussing the very real ability for our children to get to school safely,” she adds. “In amongst our students are the next great leaders and entrepreneurs of Aotearoa New Zealand – if they ever make it safely across the road to school.”
A quantitative research report, delivered to Auckland Transport in June this year, finds that one in four parents regard raised crossings as one of the most important things for keeping kids safe outside the school gate. Their top three priorities are school crossing patrols, safe drop-off zones, and reduced speed limits.
“Raised pedestrian crossings, education on road safety, infrastructure improvements and greater penalties for bad behaviour all have a role to play in addressing safety concerns,” the report says. “They build trust and confidence that children are safe going to and from school.”
Michael Brown is head of road safety engineering for Auckland Transport. He confirms raised crossings and speed humps will no longer receive central government funding.
Auckland Transport has now reviewed its use of raised devices, and will only use them where absolutely necessary. “Where we are unable to install a raised device, we will work with schools and our communities to look at alternative solutions,” he says. “This may include measures such as additional signage, electronic signage and high friction surfacing on the approach to crossings.”
Some schools, such as Oamaru Intermediate and neighbouring Pembroke primary school, are affected by the defunding of speed humps on local roads and the state highway network.
Rebecca Meek, principal of the intermediate, says they’d been working with Waka Kotahi and the council; the contractors to build a raised crossing on the council-owned side street had even been decided.
“The traffic just keeps going. If it’s going 50kph when we’re crossing kids, you can imagine what impact that’s gonna make.”
Brent Godfery, the Pembroke principal, says they’ve had to hire a local woman to stop traffic, and sometimes he fills in. “Quite frequently I nearly get hit, and I’m in a big orange jacket. The kids, because they’re small, they’re just not seen.
“We’ve had no bad injuries. We’ve had a kid a few years ago who was hit, at the pedestrian crossing where our kids cross. And there’s been car accidents, because the cars stop to let the kids cross, and the car behind smashes into them. I nearly got hit the other day. I stepped out, right next to the crossing, and someone went straight through, obviously on their phone.”
Waikato mayor Gary Kircher says the changes to the roads around the two schools were being funded by central and local government as part of the Transport Choices programme, but that’s now been cancelled by the Government.
“It would have made a significant shift in improving safety to pedestrians, many of them children walking to and from school,” Kircher says. “In doing so, it would have removed a reasonable amount of school-related traffic from our roads. Our community still has aspirations in regard to ensuring our young people are kept safe around schools.”
But Simeon Brown has a different perspective. He says New Zealanders are tired of the speed humps that “infest our streets” and make going about their day-to-day lives all the more difficult.
Asked about schools that wanted speed humps to keep kids safer, he says there is “a lot of community frustration” about one such project in Auckland. If councils wish to continue to make those investments they can do so, he adds, but they will not have the National Land Transport Fund subsidising those decisions.
He isn’t able to say how much money it would save. “I’ve asked for a list, it’s a lot. It’s a lot of raised crossings. Have we got an exact number on that? No, but it’s a lot. It’s a long list.”
Newsroom has confirmed councils have been investigating installing speed humps or new raised crossings for eight schools in the Far North, 15 schools in Auckland, one in Thames-Coromandel, four in Tauranga, six in Whakatāne, four in Hamilton, seven in New Plymouth, four on Kāpiti Coast, four in Porirua, six in Lower Hutt, an undisclosed number in Selwyn, two in Waitaki and four in Queenstown Lakes.
Councils indicate few, if any, will now proceed. Indeed, Horowhenua District Council anticipated this week’s announcement, by declining to build speed humps outside Taitoko School – despite the urging of local National MP Tim Costley. And Marlborough has postponed decisions on four school raised crossings until 2027.
Waka Kotahi chief financial officer Howard Cattermole says any new funding decisions made via the 2024-27 National Land Transport Programme on speed humps or raised pedestrian crossings must be aligned with priorities set out in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport 2024.
“We will be working with the councils to ensure projects are consistent with the GPS,” Cattermole says. “Where projects include components that are inconsistent with the GPS and not eligible to be funded from the National Land Transport Fund, councils can choose to fully fund these project components, for example from general rates.”