Onekaka gutted: 747-signature speed petition fails
Bitterly disappointed Onekaka residents heard on Tuesday that their stretch of highway does not yet qualify for a speed reduction.
They presented their 747-signature petition to the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) and TDC in March 2009. It requested a reduction from 100kmph to 70kmph along the three-kilometre stretch of State Highway 60 between Patchings’ driveway (just north of McCartney’s Hill) and the end of Little Kaituna bend (at the beginning of Tukurua).
The decision to leave the speed limit at 100kmph was delivered to 35 residents at a meeting in the Onekaka Hall on Tuesday of this week. Officials in attendance were Stuart Wright (Nelson Highway Patrol), Tim Seou (NZTA senior assets manager), Mark Pugin (NZTA safety co-ordinator) and Robin Gardener (NZTA engineer).
The officials explained that, in order for a reduction to be deemed necessary, the road in the locality had to be rated at 3.0 or more on the road transport formula. The piece of road in question is currently rated at 2.8, meaning that the area would probably have to become more urbanised to qualify.
The issue of road safety and traffic speed on Onekaka’s hill and narrow bends has received heightened public awareness since 14-year-old Sam Bowker-Knapp was killed while trying to cross the road there in late 2008. Since then, some changes at Onekaka have already been implemented: signage now warns motorists that they are passing through a rural community; caution arrows have been put around Otere corner; and the Otere bridge has been upgraded and lowered to increase visibility. A pull-off has also been built opposite Washbourn Road, at the community’s only access to the beach.
Otere bend resident Lisa Williams said the changes had all helped. “We’ve definitely been hearing a general reduction in speed as vehicles come down into Onekaka and that can only be a good thing—there are 14 kids under 10 years of age in the four properties around us. I guess we just hoped that we were further along the track with a legal speed reduction as well, but that hasn’t been the case.”
A study of reportable crashes has shown that over the last 20 years there have been 51 crashes in the six-kilometre stretch between McCartney’s Hill lookout and the Parapara Beach turnoff, compared to 33 in the same distance between Haldane Road in Takaka and Onahau Rd, 32 between Onahau Rd and McCartney’s Hill lookout, and only 18 from Parapara to Collingwood.
Vera Perry, a NZ Police road policing analyst for Tasman District HQ, recently said that the accident statistics now qualify the stretch of State Highway 60 from the top of the Takaka Hill to Collingwood as a “high crash risk area”.
At the petition meeting back in 2009, one NZTA member commented that although Onekaka was a rural residential area, most of its houses were set back and hidden from the road, which makes it appear genuinely rural and does not provide motorists with a visual cue to slow down. In fact, Onekaka has around 70 households and 170 permanent residents.
One of the suggestions put forward was that the community could establish a footpath alongside the highway to facilitate pedestrian access and safety.
Gerard Hindmarsh
