Improving road safety Improving road safety
Auckland Transport's road safety engineers work closely with the community to find ways to improve road safety and promote alternative transport options.
What our Road Safety Engineering team does
The Road Safety Engineering team reviews crash data to identify patterns of crashes. We then investigate areas where the crash risk is high and provide physical improvements on the roading network to improve safety.
Potential road improvements include:
- Traffic calming, eg speed humps and raised tables.
- Crossing facilities.
- Intersection upgrades.
- Speed management.
Any infrastructure changes are followed up with promotion and education around safe use. Our programmes aim to encourage behaviour-change in road users.
Safer communities (formerly Safety around Schools)
We work closely with the Community Transport team to investigate ways to improve pedestrian safety and promote alternative transport options through physical changes to the road network. These changes may include traffic calming, installation of crossing facilities, or intersection upgrades.
Engineering investigations focus on zones of community crash-risk and take a holistic approach to delivery, with community engagement surrounding any changes to infrastructure.
Minor safety improvements
We carry out annual crash-risk reviews of the network under key themes identified by the NZ Transport Association, such as high-risk intersections, high-risk routes, speed, pedestrians, cyclists and motor cyclists. Crash locations are identified using the Crash Analysis System (CAS) accident database and clusters are highlighted and investigated to identify any patterns or reoccurring crash patterns. Following this investigation stage, we then develop projects and prioritise them for delivery.
Safer speeds
Auckland Transport and the NZ Transport Agency have been working together on a new approach to speed management. The approach aims to create safer and better environments for people walking, on bikes and sharing the road space to keep everyone safe.
There are many different ways to reduce the number of people who are injured or die on our roads, reducing speed limits, particularly in high-risk areas is one of these. Speed impacts on the likelihood of a crash as well whether someone is seriously injured or killed.
Speed also helps to change the function of the area, making it safer and more attractive for people to visit.
The new speed management approach makes it easier to change speeds in high crash areas or where most people are already driving at a safe speed. Initial changes will be targeted to areas expected to generate the highest benefit, in line with the new NZ Transport Agency NZ Speed Management Guide and the upcoming revision of the speed limit setting rule.
Areas where we've made changes recently:
- Viaduct Harbour and Wynyard Quarter - speed limit reduced to 30km/h.
Crash reduction implementation (crash reduction studies)
We complete up to 40 road death investigations every year across the network in collaboration with NZ Police. The recommendations of these investigations (and additional investigations into serious injury crashes) often result in a variety of low-cost safety improvements including signage, markings and road surface improvements.
Regional Safety Programme
There are currently 455 high-risk intersections and 1,700km of high-risk routes across the Auckland network that require improvement. The Road Safety Engineering team completes an annual crash-risk assessment of these locations to prioritise those that require safety investment of more than $300,000 and complete an individual funding application to show the benefits of the investment.