Speed management

Speed management improves safety, saving lives and preventing serious injuries. Appropriate speed limits play a key part. Speed management also helps to reduce harmful emissions and noise pollution, makes communities more liveable and attractive, and improves our health and wellbeing.

Hamilton has a Vision Zero goal, meaning no deaths and serious injuries on our roads.

Speed Management Plan

With increasing numbers of people on our roads, we need to make sure they’re as safe as possible. Part of this is having the right speeds.

The Speed Management Plan is an implementation plan for achieving safer speeds in Hamilton. It sets out the what, who, where and how of work to be done, and indicates funding to implement the work. Speeds are managed through a combination of road design, risk-targeted enforcement, and education on safe behaviour, all reinforced by appropriate speed limits.

View the Speed Management Plan

pdf 4 MB

Safer speed areas

Safer Speeds Areas is one of our local speed limit initiatives. They set a limit of 40km/h, and are usually in:

residential areas with lots of people using active modes like bikes, scooters or walking
busy pedestrian areas like the central city
and around existing 40km/h School Speed Zones.

Safer Speed Areas are important on:

narrow residential streets with buses and other vehicles trying to squeeze past parked cars
unusually wide residential streets, as in addition to traffic calming road features, they discourage speeding.

You can view Safer Speed Areas on the National speed limits register.

Request a Safer Speed Area

If you would like to discuss a possible location for (or improvements to) a Safer Speed Area, contact our City Infrastructure Unit through our Customer Service team, by calling 07 838 6699 during office hours, emailing info@hcc.govt.nz, or use the Antenno App to contact them (available to download free on the App Store or Google Play).

30km/h speed limits around schools

New 30km/h speed limits will be introduced around all Hamilton schools from the start of Term two in 2024, to help ensure safer journeys for students.

The speed limit change was approved at the Traffic Speed Limit and Road Closure Hearing Panel on 5 December 2023, following public consultation. Reducing speed limits around schools aligns with the Hamilton Speed Management Plan 2022 and Council’s Vision Zero goal where there are no serious injuries or deaths on our roads.

You can learn more about the 30km/h school speed limit rollout here.