Norwood, Payneham & St Peters Council to investigate blanket 40km/h speed limits
Norwood, Payneham & St Peters Council will investigate a blanket 40km/h speed limit, four years after rejecting the same move.
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- Speed limit to drop to 40km/h in Stepney, Maylands and Evandale
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The speed limit across Adelaide’s east could drop to 40km/h under a new Norwood, Payneham & St Peters Council plan.
Councillors have voted 9:4 for an investigation into a citywide 40km/h speed limit, despite staff concern the timing of the process – during the COVID-19 pandemic – could be seen as “insensitive”.
Cr Fay Patterson’s proposal to examine the lower speed limits follows the introduction of 40km/h zones in Maylands, Stepney and Evandale last year.
It also comes four years after the council rejected a similar citywide 40km/h proposal.
In 2016, a $60,000 council survey that attracted about 6000 responses found that more than two thirds of respondents were satisfied with the existing speed limits.
However, Cr Patterson said a speed limit reduction would make the city safer for walkers and cyclists, especially with the Beulah Rd “bicycle boulevard” due to be finished in June.
Cr Patterson is a former chair of the Bicycle Institute of SA.
She also said a $98 million upgrade of the Magill/Portrush roads intersection, scheduled to begin in early 2021, was likely to increase “rat running for several years” in side streets.
“My overriding concern is safety,” Cr Patterson told The Messenger.
“I’m concerned that if we don’t have a citywide 40km/h (limit) soon, our community will be experiencing additional traffic issues by the end of the year.
“As a traffic engineer, higher car speeds plus vulnerable road users has me worried sick.
“In my experience, the number of requests for traffic management to address increasing issues in Norwood is high and sustained.”
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However, NP&SP urban planning and environment general manager Carlos Buzetti, in a report to the council, said a survey into the proposal was “premature”.
He said the community was focused on other “important health and financial matters” amid COVID-19.
“The reality is that many of our citizens and business operators have been significantly impacted ... and to undertake broad community consultation at this time ... would not likely be well received and indeed, would likely be considered insensitive by many citizens and business operators,” Mr Buzetti said in the report.
“A survey during or in the months immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic would likely provide skewed or ambiguous results, which would make it difficult or indeed impossible for the council to make an genuinely informed decision.
“As many businesses are closed and many citizens are working from home, traffic volumes are not ‘normal’ and are unlikely to return to previous ‘normal’ levels for several months – all things being equal.”
The issue will be referred to the council’s Traffic Management & Road Safety Committee.