Now that the local body elections are nearly upon us again, I wish to advise that I will be voting for anyone who proposes removing the idiot speed bumps that Genevieve Sage and her left wing band of activists have assisted Auckland Transport (AT) in infecting our roads system with these last three years. This has been three years of the 1% dictating to the 99% – albeit through a group of compliant drones on the Waitematā Local Board.
After a careful evaluation of the speed bumps in Sarsfield Street, and after checking Auckland Transport's own technical standards manuals, I discovered that all the raised speed bumps in Sarsfield Street were over height.
It wasn’t difficult to establish and prove this error as nearly all of the newly installed speed bumps had big gouges out of them where the differentials of various cars, SUVs, utes and small trucks had not been able to get over them without damaging either their vehicles or the speed bumps.
After weeks of contact with AT, they finally conceded that the designs did not in fact comply with their own rules and, after telling me that there was no budget for remediation, I ended up having to point out that either Fulton Hogan was liable or the council officers who signed them off were!
There was no possible excuse other than obtuse obstinacy and a complete lack of understanding of what ratepayers' demand of those wasting our money.
Long story short – they dug up and rebuilt four of the speed bumps at the eastern end of Sarsfield Street but refused to do the rest. According to AT, Fulton Hogan swallowed the cost but, of course, no doubt recovered the cost from their next unnecessary project for AT.
Should any local residents or ratepayers wish to check their local speed bumps, the specifications of note are available here: at.govt.nz/media/1982210/traffic-calming-infrastructure.pdf
Vehicles should be able to cross the speed bumps at 30 kmph without any problem. The maximum permissible height of the speed bumps in residential roads is just 100mm (10cm). The gradient is as noted below but is required to be gentle front face slope and have a gradient spread out over 1.85 metres.
I encourage anyone who can establish that the speed bumps in your area are not built to specification to complain in writing via an OIA to at.govt.nz/about-us/contact-us/official-information-requests and request remediation forthwith.
Now that AT is back under Auckland Council ‘control’ (thank you Wayne Brown), perhaps an appropriate chunk of their budget could be allocated by council, to removing the hundreds of speed bumps and raised pedestrian crossings with traffic lights and returning them to fully illuminated painted pedestrian crossings, with NO raised pedestrian crossings or speed bumps – just 50 lmph signs instead.
After all, in most residential streets it is difficult, if not impossible, to speed at greater than 50 kmph anyway, and when pedestrians are waiting to cross at pedestrian crossings, then all vehicles must stop in any event. It worked nicely for the 100 years before AT found they needed to find new ways to waste our money. It's time council and its workforce (AT) went back to improving our ability to get around Auckland efficiently rather than waste money slowing Auckland traffic to a crawl deliberately.
Roger Hawkins, Herne Bay
Speed ‘calming' judder bars and speed bumps – vote for those who will remove them!
