Subject; ‘CEAC supports Government policy to lower traffic speed’

‘Two people have died in a two-car crash on the Hawke's Bay Expressway’
This was a heart breaking event that occurred on our own community’s door step in Napier.

We send our deep heartfelt condolences to the family relatives at the loss of their loved ones.

After this week double fatal crash on Napier’s HB Expressway our family fully now support the Minister of Transport plan to use special speed cameras, finally catching all speeding traffic, and other vehicles on our narrow single lane roads that are not fit to use as a speedway by any vehicle.

Our associated members have reported to have witnessed all vehicles including trucks speeding much faster than the mandatory speeds many times while travelling on all our roads.

Subject; ‘CEAC finds lack of NZTA respect for environmental stewardship’

‘Two people have died in a two-car crash on the Hawke's Bay Expressway’

This was a heart breaking event that occurred on community’s door step in Napier and we send our condolences to the family relatives at the loss of their loved ones.

History of Napier community concerns about the safety of the dangers of the HB Expressway.
• Our community has for a long time been warning Transit NZ to slow traffic speeds down on the HB Expressway in Napier ever since 2001.
• This was triggered to develop after the 2004 report from the Transit NZ “safety Audit” confirmed our concerns were valid.
• We as community groups had placed submissions before the Napier city Council and later before the HB Regional Council asking both that they advocate for our community to request from (LTSA) to reduce the Expressway to 70kms as it passes through Napier on safety grounds.
• Transit NZ had met our committee in Partnership meetings’ as we had asked them to place lower speeds on this busy road as Transit NZ had already been made aware in the report that sited “four ‘highest level’ warnings were of concern to the engineers.
• In the ‘Transit NZ safety audit” it revelled four ‘serious safety issues’ that were outlined by the Hamilton consultants ‘Bloxham, Bennett, Oliver’ and was not ever remedied by Transit NZ or NZTA.

Those were,
• Reducing the high sloping of steep embankments.
• Improve the bad lighting,
• Improve the bad road markings, and signage.
• Other accident prone engineering concerns from flimsy guard rails on the Kennedy road overbridge and other locations.
• Critical improvements to the approaches to the Taradale road roundabout that were a safety risk.

Transit NZ never remedied the concerns and warnings since then.
The press release is attached above and was featured in the Dominion Post on page A9 on February 21st 2004 as “Audit raises expressway fears”.
Our Napier community concerns are still there today 15yrs later.
Ironically we just placed a press release about NZTA lack of Environmental safety and stewardship earlier on the same day as the fatal accident occurred. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1911/S00197/ceac-finds-lack-of-respect-for-environmental-stewardship.htm

We will mourn the loss of our own community members here.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12285577

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