Skip to main content

New Zealand speed limits will be increased if National wins next election

'Blanket approach' to speed reduction under Labour government will end, opposition says
By Adam Hill September 28, 2023 Read time: 1 min
New Zealand highways: speeding up again? (© Rafael Ben Ari | Dreamstime.com)

New Zealand's opposition National party has said it will roll back some of the ruling Labour party's reforms on road speed limits.

The speed reductions were designed to improve road safety.

The country holds a general election on 14 October - and if National wins, it says that it will look at increasing speed limits on new highways to 110km/h, while returning many state highways to 100km/h (up from 80km/h) and local roads to 50km/h (up from 30km/h).

The party's transport spokesman Simeon Brown said: "Where it's safe to do so, we will reinstate the previous speed limit."

He also said changes were required to the way highway workzones were operated, with "unecessary" use of road cones and temporary speed limit restrictions to be looked at "while also maintaining the health and safety of our road workers".

National has criticised what it calls Labour's "blanket approach" to speed limits and wants to speed up traffic.

"This inflexible approach is unnecessarily slowing Kiwis down and harming economic activity by increasing travel times," insisted National leader Christopher Luxon. 

A win for his party would lead to "a more balanced approach", he added.

Related Content

  • The great pay divide
    April 2, 2014
    Public acceptance is crucial for the acceptance of managed and express lanes as Jon Masters discovers. Lists of proposed highway expansion projects introducing variably priced toll lanes continue to lengthen. Managed lanes, or express lanes to some, are gaining support as a politically favourable way of adding capacity and reducing acute congestion on principal highways. In Florida, for example, the managed lanes on the 95 Express are claimed to have significantly increased average peak-time speeds on tolle
  • Evolving Australia's truck weighing programme
    March 1, 2013
    Regulating heavy truck weight isn’t all about sensors in the road… this year marks a significant point in the progression of Australia’s Intelligent Access Programme as its administrators attempt to answer the scheme’s critics. Jon Masters reports. Australia’s Intelligent Access Programme (IAP), the country’s telematics-based system of reg­ulating movement of the heaviest vehicles, is now five years old. The IAP is administered by Transport Certification Australia (TCA) whose general manager for strategic d
  • Development of cooperative driving applications for work zones
    July 17, 2012
    The German AKTIV project is researching several cooperative driving applications for use in work zones. PTV's Michael Ortgiese details progress. The steep increases in traffic volumes predicted back in the early 1990s have unfortunately been proven to be more than accurate. In Germany, the AKTIV project continues to look into cooperative technologies' potential to reduce the impact of those increased traffic volumes and keep traffic moving despite limitations in infrastructure capacity.
  • ITS asset management matters
    April 26, 2013
    Maintenance of on-road ITS kit needs to become more sophisticated; while new technologies can deliver better road maintenance. David Crawford investigates both sides of the issue "Good information is key to effective ITS asset maintenance,” says Ian Routledge of the Ian Routledge Consultancy (IRC), whose Imtrac (Information Management for TRAffic Control) system is poised for European expansion. Developed as an ‘intelligent filing cabinet’ for storing information about on-road equipment, the online database