Source: Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand
Road freight association Transporting New Zealand is endorsing a number of proposals in the NZ Transport Agency’s recent lane use consultation as being common sense changes, some of which reflect common practice.
The proposals include permitting children up to 12 years of age to ride bicycles on footpaths, allowing e-scooters to use cycle lanes, setting a minimum passing gap when overtaking other road users, and giving way to buses exiting bus stops.
“Young children riding bikes on footpaths and e-scooters using cycle lanes is something which already happens now, but for which the rules are unclear. These changes will normalise current behaviour and help improve safety for vulnerable road users by meaning they don’t have to share the road with larger vehicles like cars and trucks”, says Transporting New Zealand Policy & Advocacy Advisor Mark Stockdale.
“Whilst there could be a risk of young cyclists on footpaths being injured from cars reversing out of driveways, this could be partially mitigated through education encouraging drivers to ‘RIFO’: reverse in and forward out of their driveways,” Stockdale adds.
Transporting New Zealand cautiously supported other proposals to require traffic to give way to buses exiting buses stops, and to set a minimum overtaking width, as these will encourage good practice, however the association thinks the latter rule will be difficult to enforce.
“Not all of New Zealand’s road network is wide enough to permit wide passing gaps for all traffic types such as overtaking tractors or farm machinery on narrow rural roads, so some enforcement discretion would need to be applied,” Stockdale said.
However, Transporting New Zealand opposed the proposal that road controlling authorities would no longer be required to signpost any prohibitions on berm parking. The organisation said that, like some of the other proposals, this was relatively common behaviour, and to not clearly advertise a ban using signs would be problematic for drivers.
– Transporting New Zealand’s submission can be read here: https://www.transporting.nz/submissions/submission-to-nzta-lane-use-improvements
About Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand
Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand is the peak national membership association representing the road freight transport industry. Our members operate urban, rural and inter-regional commercial freight transport services throughout the country.
Road is the dominant freight mode in New
Zealand, transporting 92.8% of the freight task on a tonnage basis, and 75.1%
on a tonne-km basis. The road freight transport industry employs over 34,000
people across more than 4700 businesses, with an annual turnover of $6 billion.
