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

  • Average speed enforcement, a huge impact on reducing speed
    January 31, 2012
    A guaranteed way to get drivers to slow down and comply with work zone speed limits is to use average speed cameras. Deployed in the UK for over a decade now, they have had a huge impact, not least in achieving around 99 per cent compliance with speed limits. It's not difficult to understand: when someone knows that if they speed through a work zone it is absolutely guaranteed that they will be caught, fined and have points on their licence, only a total fool would. In the UK, SPECS average speed cameras we
  • TfL takes action to reduce coronavirus
    March 12, 2020
    Transport for London (TfL) has unveiled an enhanced cleaning regime in a bid to reduce the risk of coronavirus spreading.
  • Big data and self-driving cars: New studies from ITF
    May 29, 2015
    Two new reports launched by the International Transport Forum (ITF) during the Annual Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany, highlight issues for the transport sector: the use of big data and the trend towards automated cars. The ITF claims that failing to ensure strong privacy protection in the collection and processing of location data may result in a regulatory backlash against the technology, which could hamper innovation and limit the social and economic benefits the use of such data delive
  • Transit’s Covid clean-up operation
    August 24, 2021
    The onset of Covid-19 saw ridership on public transport slump drastically. How will the organisations that provide these essential services persuade customers back on board?